The award ceremony for the 2020 DIA is held at the Xiangshan campus of the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province on Oct 19. [Photo/zj.zjol.com.cn]

The 2020 Design Intelligence Award (DIA) was unveiled at the Xiangshan campus of the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province on Oct 19.

One of the two 2020 DIA Gold Award winners was the Digital Twin solution to factory management by Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of the Zhejiang-headquartered Alibaba Group. The advanced technological solution is meant to promote the digital transformation of traditional industries.

The other DIA Gold Award winner was the "toio" toy platform made by Japanese tech giant Sony. The platform lets children put blocks and other items on cubes and move the cubes around a controller, encouraging them to use their imagination and creativity.

Supported by the Zhejiang Provincial Government, the DIA was established by the Hangzhou-based China Academy of Art in 2015 and is the first international award for industrial design in China.

The global influence of the annual award has been growing rapidly over the past five years. Despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, a total of 7,369 design works from across the world were submitted to compete for this year's DIA, 31 percent higher than the previous year. Among the applicants were many Fortune Global 500 companies such as Alibaba, Honeywell, and Fujitsu.

The DIA has made significant contributions to the commercialization of industrial designs in Zhejiang province. Zhejiang's design works that won the DIA between 2016 and 2019 have so far grossed 170 billion yuan ($25.5 billion) in total revenue.