Challenge Works
Challenge Works is the new name of Nesta Challenges. We are a social enterprise founded by the UK’s innovation agency Nesta. For a decade, we have established ourselves as a global leader in the design and delivery of high-impact challenge prizes that incentivise cutting-edge innovation for social good. In the last 10 years, we have run more than 80 prizes, distributed £84 million in funding and engaged with 12,000 innovators.
The world finds itself at a critical juncture. Together, we face multiple compounding problems, but there is enormous opportunity to discover solutions and expand innovation frontiers. The impact of climate change is felt more harshly by the year, but innovation can mitigate this impact; the growth of chronic health conditions and the widening global inequity in access to healthcare can be reversed; an ever more complex, connected and digitally driven world poses a multiplicity of societal challenges but also makes rapid, positive, life-changing technological change possible - if harnessed and directed properly.
We believe no challenge is unsolvable. Challenge Works partners with organisations, charities and governments around the globe to unearth the entrepreneurs and their innovations that can solve the greatest challenges of our time.
Challenge prizes champion open innovation through competition. We specify a problem that needs solving, but not what the solution should be. We offer large cash incentives to encourage diverse innovators to apply their ingenuity to solving the problem. The most promising solutions are rewarded with seed funding and expert capacity building support, so that they can prove their impact and effectiveness. The first or best innovation to solve the problem wins. This approach levels the playing field for unknown and previously untested innovators so that the best ideas, no matter their origin, are brought to bear on the most difficult of global challenges.
The world finds itself at a critical juncture. Together, we face multiple compounding problems, but there is enormous opportunity to discover solutions and expand innovation frontiers. The impact of climate change is felt more harshly by the year, but innovation can mitigate this impact; the growth of chronic health conditions and the widening global inequity in access to healthcare can be reversed; an ever more complex, connected and digitally driven world poses a multiplicity of societal challenges but also makes rapid, positive, life-changing technological change possible - if harnessed and directed properly.
We believe no challenge is unsolvable. Challenge Works partners with organisations, charities and governments around the globe to unearth the entrepreneurs and their innovations that can solve the greatest challenges of our time.
Challenge prizes champion open innovation through competition. We specify a problem that needs solving, but not what the solution should be. We offer large cash incentives to encourage diverse innovators to apply their ingenuity to solving the problem. The most promising solutions are rewarded with seed funding and expert capacity building support, so that they can prove their impact and effectiveness. The first or best innovation to solve the problem wins. This approach levels the playing field for unknown and previously untested innovators so that the best ideas, no matter their origin, are brought to bear on the most difficult of global challenges.