2025 Finalists: HP, Ipiranga, Wayfair, OpenGrid Europe, Maersk

2025 Winner: Wayfair

Read Press Release here.  The recording of Wayfair’s reprisal presentation is available on the IIF YouTube Channel @IIForecasters.

About the IIF Award: The IIF Award for the Impact of Forecasting in Practice aims to recognize and showcase businesses or institutions that achieve significant impact by applying forecasting, while contributing to the forecasting community. Applications are evaluated in 5 key areas: Impact to the business or institution, Impact on the forecasting community, Challenge, Role of forecasting in the solution, and Style/quality of the submission and presentation. The award comes with a $10,000 cash prize to the first-place winning team. A non-cash recognition may be issued to the second-place runner-up, at the award committee’s discretion.

Requirements

  1. Entrants are companies or institutions, not individuals.
  2. Each entrant may be represented by a team of up to 5 contributors.
  3. Finalist teams must attend the Foresight Practitioner Conference in person to participate in the Final Round.
  4. To enter the competition, you must agree that if you become a finalist your team must submit the details of your methodology and impact for publication in a Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting special issue, according to the timeline requested by the editors.
  5. Impact statement must be in writing from an executive (typically a VP or above) of the business or institution.

Evaluation Criteria

Applications will be evaluated in five key areas:

  • Impact to the business or institution: Quantifiable value-add to the business or institution (should be large in terms of both overall impact as well as relative to the size of the business). Applications should carefully denote any costs the organization incurred and elaborate on which gains are realized versus unrealized. 
  • Impact on the forecasting community through advancing a technology, sharing best practices, publications, etc.
  • Challenge: Degree of technical and/or organizational challenge that was overcome. Applications should explain what challenges were faced and how they were overcome.
  • Role of forecasting in the solution: Applications should explain how their solution related to forecasting, what portion of the value-add is attributable to forecasting, and what portion of the value-add was attributed to the entrant’s efforts.
  • Style and quality of the application and presentation.

2025 Competition Committee

The Competition Committee is responsible for organizing and administering the competition.

Committee members:

Chris Fry (2025 Chair)
Pierre Pinson (2025 Co-Chair)
Matthew Schneider
Len Tashman
Elaine Deschamps

Adjudication Panel

2025 judges:

Chris Fry
Pierre Pinson
Matthew Schneider
Len Tashman
Elaine Deschamps
Nikos Kourentzes
Tao Hong