Five things we’ve learned about running city-based open innovation challenges

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Five things we’ve learned about running city-based open innovation challenges

11 March 2022

Cities and open innovation challenges

Cities are increasingly using open innovation challenges to solve problems, grow local industries, open up new avenues of collaboration, and unlock broader systems change. In this blog, we share what we’ve learnt from running challenge prizes with cities.

Cities will be home to two out of every three people on the planet by 2050, and nearly 9 out of every 10 people by the start of the next century. Cities are particularly vulnerable to climate change, facing risks from extreme weather events and natural disasters, and are contending with significant social and economic inequalities, a shortage of affordable housing and the pressure to deliver services and infrastructure to support burgeoning populations while meeting net zero ambitions.

A new innovative approach to problems

To create better outcomes for the communities they serve, city leaders are increasingly exploring mission-oriented innovation methods. More and more, we are hearing from cities seeking support to align activities around a mission and guidance in applying new methods to solve problems.

For example, how can the city of Curitiba create zero carbon neighbourhoods that build on historic urban infrastructure and character and create green jobs? 

How can Lambeth council in south London visualise air quality levels and test the efficacy of planned interventions to improve the health of vulnerable residents?

The city of Bristol aims to develop 24,000 new affordable homes by 2050, yet the built environment contributes around 40% of the UK’s total carbon footprint. How can they work with developers, financiers and the construction industry to provide affordable, carbon neutral homes to meet this need? 

Harnessing innovation potential

City-based open innovation challenges are an increasingly popular way to help local communities solve problems. They draw on the philosophy that “good ideas can come from anywhere” and open up avenues of collaboration that aren’t typically found in local government procurement processes.

Open innovation challenges, as we run them, use an outcomes-based funding model to drive mission-oriented innovation, through an open and competitive process. Run in partnership with cities, challenges harness innovation potential around a particular mission of importance to the city.

Attracting innovation

They typically start with an open call to innovators (which can be startups, established businesses, charities, social enterprises and so on). The most promising entrants are then invited to develop, test and scale solutions, usually in collaboration or with input from local officials, civil servants, the third-sector, representatives from the public, regulators, investors and other relevant stakeholders, and usually with a bit of funding to support this work. Those that are most successful win the most funding and benefit from public recognition, and tend to go on to build their business and customer base. Depending on their business model, the customer may be the city government itself.

Using our experience to deliver successful challenges

At Challenge Works we have helped to deliver a series of city-based challenges in the past decade. Last year, we ran the London Mayor’s Resilience Fund, a collaboration with local authorities and agencies in London to create local challenge prizes, addressing things like renewable energy production, mental health support and regeneration on the high street. Integral to each challenge was a co-creation process wherein the top innovators worked with the problem owners and people who would benefit from the solution (eg, people with lived experience or high street business owners) to ensure that the solutions developed would genuinely improve their situations. The challenge topics and criteria for choosing the winners were designed to reward teams that could demonstrate that their solutions had potential to scale.

In the Climate Smart Cities Challenge, an open innovation competition to accelerate the shift to climate neutral cities, we’ve worked with UN-Habitat and Viable Cities (and a host of other impressive colleagues) to design four challenges in partnership with cities. The challenges aims to reduce the climate impact of the freight industry in Bogotá, Colombia; scale affordable, carbon-neutral home development in Bristol, United Kingdom; integrate waste, mobility and energy solutions to create zero-carbon neighbourhoods in Curitiba, Brazil; and create green, affordable homes in Makindye Ssabagabo, Uganda.

A tailored approach

We worked with each city to define the challenges, and then invited innovators to work with these cities to create solutions that can ultimately bring about the systemic change needed to get to net zero. This kind of approach is helping cities reinvent the way they innovate, giving them experience of open innovation processes with a range of different local and international innovators that may not otherwise participate in city processes.

In partnership with the Greater London Authority, we’ve also interviewed cities around the world who have delivered similar open innovation competitions, and we’re currently advising a set of city-regions in Northern Ireland looking to do the same.

Five lessons we have learned so far

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