How challenge prizes level the playing field for innovators
26 September 2022
- Managing Director of Challenge Works
- Tris Dyson
Dementia is thought to affect around 50 million people globally, and in the UK alone someone is diagnosed every three minutes. This is a disease that knows no boundaries, and, sadly, can affect anyone – regardless of background.
Driving innovation to improve care for those living with dementia requires knowledge from all backgrounds and unexpected suspects, however, traditional funding structures do not offer a level playing field for potential innovators. That’s why challenge prizes, which reward solutions, rather than names, can make a real difference.
In simple terms, challenge prizes incentivise the development of breakthrough technologies to solve some of the most difficult problems of our time, by rewarding the idea, rather than just recognising established institutions.
Grants vs Prizes
Traditional research and development (R&D) grant funding provides support based on a promise of innovation. For this reason, funders understandably tend to choose well-known businesses that have solid track-records. These offer a lower risk at the time of issuing the grant and undoubtedly produce positive results, but have the unintended consequence of overlooking unknown or untested innovators.
This tends to include small businesses, start-ups and entrepreneurs, often representative of a wider range of backgrounds and experiences. The traditional funding can therefore extend existing biases, and create limited solutions.
For the Longitude Prize on Dementia, innovators are expected to come from many different fields to compete in the prize. From researchers working on relevant artificial intelligent tools that could be applied to dementia, to clinicians, designers with expertise in user-centered solutions, data scientists and technology experts.
De-risking unknown innovation
Challenge prizes do the exact opposite. They encourage and support multiple approaches to solving a problem, and help entries to progress through different stages. With an objective and expert judging panel making all final decisions, the process ensures that the most promising solutions progress with seed funding and expert-led capacity-building support, regardless of origin.
In addition, solutions can only win the overall prize once proven to work, removing the associated risk that influences decisions for traditional funding. This approach creates a level playing field for well-known and unknown innovators to compete on equal footings.
Additionally, challenge prizes do not specify how a problem should be solved. This means they allow for multiple and diverse solutions to progress through the competition. Although there is a winner, Challenge Works’ experience of running challenge prizes for a decade has shown that the format produces multiple solutions that go on to make a positive contribution to society.
Three centuries of challenge prizes
Despite embodying our modern values of democracy, challenge prizes have been used for centuries. In 1714, the original Longitude Prize took place, launched by the British government of the time to develop an accurate and useful way of measuring longitude for sailors, who were increasingly unable to safely navigate crucial eastward trade routes.
Since then, challenge prizes went on to play a vital role in the development of technologies through the industrial revolution – including behind railway and aviation breakthroughs.
Although they fell out of use after the Second World War with grant funding becoming dominant, they have experienced a revival in the last decade thanks to their ability to unearth unexpected solutions to great problems and tap into a rich seam of global innovators.
It goes without saying that for a challenge as wide-reaching as dementia a level playing field for innovators is crucial. Incentivising new tools that help people living with dementia live joyful, fulfilling and independent lives, requires solutions as diverse as the people they are designed to help.
