What a good city-based challenge looks like
Defining a good challenge is an art, more than a science
If your city is selected for the Climate Smart Cities Challenge, we’ll work closely with you to refine the details. At this stage all we’re looking for is a problem which is promising, and which has the potential to be turned into an impactful challenge prize. And then we’ll work together to run a challenge based on your city’s priorities.
Through running over forty challenges of our own and advising on many others, we’ve found a good rule of thumb for finding out which ideas have potential: a set of questions give a good sense of whether a challenge is likely to be a sensible approach.
In this blog post we’ll work through these questions and show what a good challenge looks like. In a follow-up post on Thursday 3 December, we’ll give some hints and tips on how to come up with one.
If you can say yes to all or most of these green light criteria then the chances are a challenge prize would be a good approach to follow, and your application to the Climate Smart Cities Challenge will be strong:
These aren’t scientific laws of nature – they’re just a good initial sense check on whether a problem is likely to be the kind a challenge initiative could solve.
In Fridays’s blog post, we’ll give some pointers on how to go about developing ideas that meet these standards.
Learn more about the Climate Smart Cities Challenge and how to enter. Entries close 22 January 2021.