Centre for Challenge Prizes FAQs

Do you have a question? Have a look through our FAQs for answers to common questions asked about challenge prizes and the Centre for Challenge Prizes.

What is the Centre for Challenge Prizes?
What does the Centre for Challenge Prizes do?
What are challenge prizes?
What are the benefits of a challenge prize?
Does the Centre for Challenge Prizes have a board/committee?
Who is behind the Centre's formation and why?
Why is the Centre for Challenge Prizes necessary?
Who is funding the Centre?
Why is Nesta setting up the Centre for Challenge Prizes?
What prizes is the Centre currently running?
Can I find out more about closed competitions?
How does the Centre decide what prizes it is going to run?
Who is eligible to enter a challenge prize run by the Centre for Challenge Prizes?
How can I participate in a challenge?
How can I get involved with the Centre for Challenge Prizes?
I have experience in running challenges and would like to share this with you.
I would like some advice on how to run a challenge.



What is the Centre for Challenge Prizes?

The Centre for Challenge Prizes is a hub for expertise and insight on challenge prizes. It has been created to design and manage challenge prizes that will deliver beneficial innovations and to generate and share learning and insights on the design and use of challenge prizes.

The Centre launch coincides with an exciting time for innovation in the UK.  Its work will help build understanding of how challenge prizes can play an effective and strategic role in the stimulation and support of innovation.

What does the Centre for Challenge Prizes do?

The Centre acts as a hub for expertise and interest in challenge prizes and will:

Generate and share learning and insights on the design and use of challenge prizes

Examples of activities include setting up a practitioner group; developing and contributing to research projects with UK and international partners; running relevant events and group discussions. The experience of running challenge prizes will also contribute to the development of the evidence base. 

Design and run new examples of challenge prizes

Design and run new examples of challenge prizes with and on behalf of partners to develop innovative solutions to specific challenges. We expect these prizes will mainly be awarded based on results - working prototypes or measured outcomes. We will run prizes on a range of topics with a range of partners, with a view to building expertise and evidence on prize design and furthering Nesta's charitable objectives in relation to innovation.

What are challenge prizes?

Challenge prizes, also called 'inducement' prizes, offer a reward to whoever can first, or most effectively, meet a defined challenge. They act as an incentive for meeting a specific challenge, rather than an award for past achievements (prizes that do this are referred to as 'recognition' prizes).

They can be a powerful to way stimulate innovation in a broad range of different sectors.

What are the benefits of a challenge prize?

Past experience and extensive research shows that challenge prizes can:

• Attract new innovators to meet a challenge and harness fresh thinking.
• Encourage collaboration between people from different sectors or disciplines that would not otherwise have occurred.
• Focus attention and effort on challenges that have been neglected, or that have proved difficult to solve through mainstream research efforts.
• Capture public imagination and generate widespread interest in a new field of endeavour.
• Foster innovation in a wide range of different sectors. Prizes have focused on traditional technological challenges like spaceflight, multifaceted issues like global security, and social issues such as community energy use.
• Encourage dramatic advances by setting ambitious goals.
• Generate commercial activity.
• Limit financial risk (by awarding a prize only when the challenge is successfully met).

Does the Centre for Challenge Prizes have a board/committee?

The Centre for Challenge Prizes will be managed by Nesta. We are establishing an independent Advisory Board to provide strategic advice to the Centre. We intend to invite other individuals and organisations who can contribute funding or expertise to the Centre to join the Advisory Board, together with representatives from both Nesta and the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. 

Who is behind the Centre's formation and why?

In December 2011, as part of their Innovation and Research Strategy, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills committed to supporting Nesta in establishing a centre of expertise for running innovation inducement prizes, and to invest in a new Innovation Prize Fund.

Nesta has spoken with a range of experts during the establishment of the Centre, and will continue to do so as the Centre develops.

Why is the Centre for Challenge Prizes necessary?

There has been a rapidly growing interest in challenge prizes over recent years, and there is huge potential to build on this and to do more to understand when and how challenge prizes can be effective in different contexts.  

The value of the Centre is that it acts as a focal point for building knowledge about prizes across a range of sectors, and for disseminating this across the UK.

By drawing together and adding to experience of running and designing challenge prizes, and the evidence this generates, the Centre hopes to help more funders and policy makers make effective use of them.  

Who is funding the Centre?

BIS will invest £250,000 a year for the next three years to help create a National Prize Fund. They have also invested an additional £100,000 to support the first prizes that the Centre will run. Nesta will contribute £250,000 in Year 1 (2012/13), which includes events, publications and core staffing.

Enquiries are welcome from organisations or individuals interested in contributing to the National Prize Fund or to specific prizes.

Why is Nesta setting up the Centre for Challenge Prizes?

Nesta has practical expertise in the design and delivery of challenge prizes and similar programmes.  For example:

• The Big Green Challenge was the first challenge prize of its kind. This was a £1 million prize to the community-based groups who could have the biggest demonstrable measurable reductions in CO2 emissions in a community.  Since running the Big Green Challenge, and publishing a practical guide to using the model, we've been approached by people across the world interested in running challenge prizes.
• In our Neighbourhood Challenge programme we have supported community organisations across England to use a range of methods for generating and supporting ideas from within their neighbourhoods - including micro challenge prizes.
• In 2010 the open innovation agency 100% Open spun out of Nesta as a result of our successful corporate open innovation programme.

Nesta also has a wider body of knowledge and experience in innovation methods, and is able to understand and connect challenge prizes with this wider innovation context.  Nesta is in a unique position to bring together organisations and individuals from different sectors together to debate, understand and apply different innovation methods, and has experience of doing this. 

What prizes is the Centre currently running?

The Centre for Challenge prizes currently has two live Challenge Prizes:

In association with BIS:

• The Hands Off My Bike Challenge Prize is looking for breakthrough innovations to make it more difficult to steal bikes and have the potential to increase numbers of people cycling in the UK.
• The Workplace Cycle Challenge Prize is inviting UK workplaces with more than 10 employees to come up with new ways of increasing the number of employees cycling to and from work.

For more information view the Challenge Prizes homepage

We also expect to announce more prizes later in the year.

Can I find out more about any closed competitions?

Earllier this year we launched the Giving Challenge Prizes funded by the Cabinet Office.

Cabinet Office Funded Prizes:

• The Waste  Reduction Challenge Prize is looking for the innovation that achieves the biggest measureable reduction in waste, by providing new opportunities for communities to come together to give time, skills and resources.
• The Ageing Well Challenge Prize is looking for the innovation that can reduce the isolation and/or increase the mobility of vulnerable older people by providing new opportunities for communities to come together to give time, skills and resources.

How does the Centre decide what prizes it is going to run?

The challenge prizes the Centre designs and runs will primarily focus on prizes that reward tangible results such as working prototypes or successful measured outcomes and which advance Nesta's charitable objects. 

Within this context, the prizes, as well as the expertise and evidence brought together by the Centre, will cover a broader range of topics and sectors. 

Specific topics will be developed in collaboration with partners and in consultation with relevant subject experts.

Who is eligible to enter a challenge prize run by the Centre for Challenge Prizes? 

Each challenge will have its own entry criteria that will state who is eligible to enter the challenge prizes. The intention will always be to secure the widest possible participation in prize competitions. 

How can I participate in a challenge? 

The best way to hear about challenges prizes launched by the Centre will be by signing up for the Nesta newsletter via our website home page (www.nesta.org.uk).  As each challenge is opened we will publish detailed information about how to participate.

How can I get involved with the Centre for Challenge Prizes? 

If you have queries about running, promoting or collaborating on a challenge, event or research project, please send us an email with your request at challengeprizes@nesta.org.uk     

I have experience in running challenges and would like to share this with you.  

We welcome any information that you want to share about your experiences with the Centre for Challenge Prizes. Please email us at challengeprizes@nesta.org.uk explaining what you would like to share and discuss and we will get in contact with you. 

I would like some advice on how to run a challenge.  

We have links to journals, reports and articles that provide a lot of useful information on challenge prizes on this website.  If after looking through these you would like to discuss receiving some more specific advice please email us at challengeprizes@nesta.org.uk.