Mission Possible: The role of challenge prizes in a revitalised UK Innovation Strategy
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Measurable, time-bound Innovation Missions demand new ways of working What does this more strategic role for Government mean in practice? Central to the Innovation Strategy are plans for a new programme of specific, measurable and timed Innovation Missions, focussed on some of the Government’s highest policy priorities, potentially including climate change, biodiversity, pandemic preparedness and the impact of an ageing society. These Missions will be inclusive by design, mobilising all sectors of the economy including the public sector, industry, civil society and universities. This represents a new direction for UK innovation policy, which has historically shied away from providing direction through ‘measurable and timed’ objectives – in part no doubt because of the long shadow cast by industrial policy failures of the past. So for example the 2017 Industrial Strategy, which this Innovation Strategy succeeds, defined strategic themes in the form of four Grand Challenges, to provide strategic alignment for specific missions, individual challenges and over 1,600 projects.4 But while a step beyond historical focus on horizontal, sector-agnostic policy such as R&D tax credits, the Industrial Strategy stopped short of a commitment to specific, measurable goals. We welcome the Innovation Strategy’s move to introduce specific, measurable and timed Innovation Missions, because: • They provide a mechanism for more directly tying public investment in innovation to progress against the social and economic objectives that matter most to the public. They thereby complement growing investment in basic scientific research, which will continue to be the bedrock of the UK’s R&D system. • They provide focus and direction that can help coordinate the many different players in the economy whose contribution is needed to tackle significant challenges. By making Government priorities more explicit and its future actions more predictable, credible Missions can provide a firmer basis for private investment decisions than broad themes. They could thereby help translate growth in public investment in R&D to growth in private investment, helping to correct the UK’s longstanding R&D investment deficit. • In moving the focus away from process to outcomes, they help strengthen accountability, encourage experimentation with different approaches and allow for more robust evaluation and assessment of ‘what works’.
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