Mission Possible: The role of challenge prizes in a revitalised UK Innovation Strategy
Summary The UK has bold ambitions to be a global science and innovation superpower. It already punches far above its weight in science, where growing public investment will further strengthen its position. But to achieve the same for innovation, where it lags, the UK innovation ecosystem will require not only new resources but also new ways of working. The paper makes the case that challenge prizes should step out of the shadows and be a key building block for the new Innovation Missions Programme announced in the Government’s recently published Innovation Strategy. It sets out how challenge prizes can complement grants, reduce risk in portfolios of government innovation investments, and can be particularly effective at stimulating near-market innovation targeting specific outcomes and private R&D investment. Nesta Challenges has been involved in many of the most high profile challenge prizes undertaken in the UK over the past decade. We share in this paper some of the insight gained from this experience for how to ‘get prizes right’ within the Innovation Missions, alongside ideas for a number of potential large scale technology challenge prizes that we have developed with partners in the UK innovation ecosystem.
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