The H&M Foundation launched the Global Change Award – called The Nobel Prize of Fashion – as the first innovation challenge of its kind in 2015. Since then, 46 innovations have received support and a combined grant of 8 million euros from the Global Change Award. And the grant is just one perk of winning the Global Change Award.

Our winners each receive €200,000 and are celebrated and awarded at the iconic Stockholm City Hall, the home of the Nobel Prize, where they are also connected to the wider industry. They also enter a yearlong Changemaker Programme provided by the H&M Foundation in collaboration with our strategic partners Accenture and KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

Promoting solutions that will benefit both people and planet

Initially, we were looking to increase circularity, and then moving on to focusing on finding planet positive solutions. We are now gearing up to help the textile industry with one of its biggest challenges – decarbonisation. More specifically, supporting the textile industry in halving its greenhouse gas emissions every decade, in line with the carbon law. The aim is to transform the textile industry through systems thinking.

Every year we will empower ten new changemakers – persons with the commitment, capacity, and initiative to solve problems – on their unique journeys, to transform their groundbreaking ideas into tangible, impactful innovations. The common denominator is that our changemakers are early-stage, meaning their promising ideas can advance to concept validation. Our goal is to equip them and the textile industry with knowledge, tools, connections, and a holistic mindset and spark significant, industry-wide transformation towards a net-zero future where both people and the planet can thrive.

The GCA operates within four key areas of transformation that contribute to our strategic direction in a systemic way. The below descriptions within these areas are examples but should not be taken as exhaustive.

• Sustainable materials and processes – Low energy materials and new and recycled fibres, sustainable energy practices, alternative wet processes, treatments and finishes and new construction techniques.
• Responsible production – Solutions within renewable energy, energy efficiency, prediction modelling, traceability, on-demand, waste management and zero-waste
• Mindful consumption – Solutions on how to reshape demand, garment care, extending garment life cycles, recycling solutions, and circular business models
• Wildcards – Impactful solutions and drivers we haven’t considered or been made aware of but speak to the overarching mission of the GCA.

How we do it

Over the years, we have seen the Global Change Award growing into a powerful network of diverse players that are taking action to reinvent and shape the future of our industry. And going forward, our ambition is to continuously support and back this ever-growing ecosystem of motivated and ambitious changemakers, GCA alumni, experts, brands and retailers, funders, suppliers and more on our joint journey towards decarbonisation – and an inclusive and planet positive textile industry.

This is how we actively support systems change through this network;

• We promote systems thinking – we actively promote a holistic approach, including the perspectives of people and the planet and we strive to equip changemakers as well as industry stakeholders with knowledge about how to drive systems change.
• We bring people together – we actively seek to connect the right people at the right point in time. We aim to leverage our connection to the textile industry, and we also look beyond the “usual suspects”.
• We share learnings and insights – we strive to increase knowledge within the industry and the innovation ecosystem by encouraging knowledge sharing around challenges and possible solutions, systems change, collaboration and innovation.
• We catalyse diversity of people and ideas – as transformative change requires action and shifts on multiple levels and across many areas, we strive to support a wide range of changemakers and build a diverse network of actors that can contribute to transformation.

Already, several past winners are implemented by, or in collaborations with, global brands and businesses to transform the entire textile industry.

Neither H&M Foundation or H&M Group take any shareholder equity or intellectual property rights in the winning innovations. The winners can collaborate with whomever they want, the aim is to find innovations that allow major change for the entire industry.

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