Mission Possible: The role of challenge prizes in a revitalised UK Innovation Strategy
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How challenge prizes might be integrated into Innovation Missions Ambitious Missions of the kind announced in the Innovation Strategy are new to UK innovation policy and there is no ready-made blueprint for how to design and execute them effectively in the UK context. Although the specific focus of the individual Missions has not yet been determined, it is reasonable to expect that they will be diverse in character, demanding a flexible and creative approach to their management individually and as an overall programme. We offer here preliminary reflections on how Missions might be conceptualised and organised, and based on these the role that challenge prizes could play in their execution. A Mission may usefully be conceptualised as a coordinated portfolio of investments that evolves over time with a view to achieving a specified goal. Although the objective of the Mission overall will remain constant, what the Mission needs to accomplish at any moment in time en route towards that objective will change. For instance, at any moment in time it could be the case that: • The ‘best’ future roadmap, or sequence of problems to be solved to achieve the Mission, is clear, though the best solutions to these problems are not clear. In this case the Mission will focus on navigating that part of the roadmap it has reached; or • It is still unclear which of several possible roadmaps to achieve the Mission is best. In this case the Mission will focus on comparing and evaluating different possible roadmaps. Taking this perspective of a Mission as an evolving portfolio of investments, key challenges for those with responsibility for leading a Mission will be: • Identifying and creating the ‘best’ portfolio of investments at a particular point in the Mission’s lifetime; and • Planning and preparing for how the portfolio should evolve over time under conditions of considerable risk and uncertainty.
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