Women Innovators Incubator Applications Open and New Survey Released

Reykjavik, Iceland (Tuesday 8 March 2022) WomenTechIceland in partnership with Huawei have opened applications to its upcoming Women Innovators Incubator, which will take place over a series of days in April and May. The incubator will conclude with a panel discussion, incubator team presentations and selection of a Women Innovators winner during Innovation Week. The winner of the incubator will receive 1m ISK as well as mentor and resources support. Applications are open until Monday, 21 March 2022.

“We hear exceptional ideas from women everyday– from solutions to improving society and communities, to resourceful approaches to change systems and services, to compelling business ideas that can fundamentally improve women’s share of global capital,” explains Paula Gould, Co-founder of WomenTechIceland. “Many of these ideas come from women who do not consider themselves entrepreneurs or who are inexperienced, early entrepreneurs who need more approachable, comprehensive support. Our goal with the Women Innovators Incubator is to provide a platform for these women to turn their ideas into projects, and encourage the use of technology in their processes.”

“We want women from a variety of backgrounds, whether technically savvy, entrepreneurial or not, to feel they can take a chance on themselves and their ideas during this incubator, while we provide them with the technical knowledge, resources and mentors to give them the lift they need,” says Beatriz Garcia Martinez, Public Affairs Manager, Iceland Branch, Huawei Technologies Sweden.

The Women Innovators Incubator is part of a year-long partnership between WomenTechIceland and Huawei, that began in May 2021, and has included a series of panels and workshops, as well as community information sharing. Each event leading up to the Women Innovators Incubator focuses on sharing key knowledge from various aspects of the tech sector, helps contribute to the upskilling and training of women within the Icelandic business community and provides key learnings that are relevant to working in tech.

The approach has been interdisciplinary, attracting people from diverse backgrounds and industry sectors, and promotes the many different, creative ways to develop solutions to problems, informed from various points of view, skill sets and knowledge bases across STEAM.

In addition to the Women Innovators applications, WomenTechIceland is releasing a survey, in Icelandic and English, to better understand why women choose, or choose not, to have a career in tech and what barriers would prevent or opportunities would lead to women thriving in tech. Likewise, the survey asks what leads to women deciding to join, or not join, hackathons, incubators and accelerators. The goal is to then use the survey feedback to frame the incubator in a way that will make participants more successful in turning their brilliant ideas into projects.

Paula Gould, Co-founder of WomenTechIceland will present some of the survey data at UTmessan during her talk “Upskilling as a pathway to equality in Tech” on 25 May 2022.