Fast Company has honoured innovation consultancy Hellon as a winner and two-time honorable mention in Fast Company’s 2022 Innovation by Design Awards.
Decarbonizing Farming by Hellon and Yara was honoured in Fast Company’s 2022 Innovation by Design Awards, one of the most sought-after design awards in the industry, as the winner of the Established Excellence category, alongside two honourable mentions in the categories of Impact and Sustainability.
The Innovation by Design Awards honour the designers and businesses solving today's most crucial problems and anticipating tomorrow's pressing issues. Now in its 11th year, the competition features a range of blue-chip companies, emerging startups, and hungry young talents. It is one of the most sought-after design awards in the industry. Honourees include products and services from Nike, Verizon, Microsoft, and others.
Yara, a global crop nutrition company, partnered with Hellon to create a solution to support farmers in the green transition. Together with French farmers, they created a circular service that supports farmers in identifying and measuring the impact of their greener practices and connects them with operators along the food value chain to exchange low-carbon goods. In 2021, a pilot was launched with the aim to help farmers produce low-carbon oilseed rape grain.
Hellon’s farmer-centric design process closely engaged farmers to understand their current challenges and needs to understand how they would need support when taking steps toward greener practices. The insights were used as prompts to ideate and innovate concepts that were tested to understand the most desirable, feasible, viable and positively impactful solutions to pilot in France.
The co-created sustainable circular model provides value to our society, planet and all parties involved. The solution enables ways to cut carbon from key steps of the farmers’ yearly harvest cycle that have been tailored to the farmers’ existing ways of working. This makes the service easy to adopt. The service is among the very first to bridge the gap between sustainability and profitability. The solution supports their financial independence, economic equality, and future potential to stay competitive within the market.
Receiving these recognitions by Fast Company in the Innovation by Design Awards shows that human-centric design is exceptionally well-suited for solving some of the world's most complex problems.
“Receiving these recognitions by Fast Company in the Innovation by Design Awards shows that human-centric design is exceptionally well-suited for solving some of the world's most complex problems. "Designing a win-win-win circular model requires openness to challenge conventions and the courage to explore new ways to operate from all the players in the value chain. It needs a "primus motor" to take the initiative; in this case, it was Yara,” said Timo Patiala, Managing Director and Founding Partner for Hellon London.
“Decarbonizing Farming reflects the integration of Yara’s mission to responsibly feed the world and protect the planet and the ambition of growing a nature-positive food future. We want to be part of the solution to the urgent challenge of making agriculture more sustainable. And we know that to truly succeed in doing so, we need to build collaboration across the industry through strong partnerships, such as those we have established through this initiative,” continues Allison O ́Dell, Marketing Director Continental Europe at Yara. London, United Kingdom September 15, 2022.
Decarbonizing Farming by Hellon and Yara was honoured in Fast Company’s 2022 Innovation by Design Awards, one of the most sought-after design awards in the industry as the winner of the Established Excellence category, alongside two honourable mentions in the categories of Impact and Sustainability.
"We need to build collaboration across the industry through strong partnerships, such as those we have established through this initiative"
“A common theme among this year’s Innovation by Design honourees, which range from healthcare interfaces to autonomous driving technology, is permanence,” said Brendan Vaughan, editor-in-chief of Fast Company. “The products that leaped out to our editors and judges went against our quick-x consumer culture, while also manifesting a more inclusive vision of design.”
The judges include renowned designers from a variety of disciplines, business leaders from some of the most innovative companies in the world, and Fast Company’s own writers and editors. Entries are judged on the key ingredients of innovation: functionality, originality, beauty, sustainability, user insight, cultural impact, and business impact.
Winners, finalists, and honourable mentions are featured online and in the October issue of Fast Company magazine, on newsstands September 27, 2022.
See our case reference: https://hellon.com/work/yara-international
Fast company's article: https://www.fastcompany.com/90767852/how-a-surprising-middle-man-made-french-crops-greener