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Collaborate with us

Your skills and experience could be the key to helping us find the radical ideas that will lead to solving the world’s biggest problems

Collaboration for impact

No great idea exists in a vacuum. For over a decade, I’ve seen firsthand how true impact requires bringing the right minds together. At Challenge Works, we are experts at rapidly mapping complex problem landscapes, identifying “prizeable” opportunities and bringing them to life through high-impact challenges.

Whether we are working with world-leading funders to build paradigm-shifting prizes, empowering frontline innovators or uniting communities of thinkers and doers to design the perfect challenge, our mission remains the same: we connect people and ideas to make innovation happen – fast.

We thrive on bold thinking and fresh perspectives. If you have an idea or a problem to solve, we want to hear from you.

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Our partners

We have worked with government, commercial and philanthropic funders around the world, just some of which are listed below:

Have a problem you need to solve?

If you see a challenge the world can’t afford to ignore, let’s tackle it together. Partners identify problems that need solving, then we at Challenge Works design prizes to attract radical thinkers who want to solve them. Reach out to learn how we can build an open innovation challenge together.

Get in touch

Partner benefits

Our partners are a core part of our mission to unlock systemic change. As an alternative model to traditional grant funding, we provide funders who want to take a bold, target-driven approach to innovation with the insight and tools to do so. Benefits for partners include:

  • Access to the best of public-sector strategic direction combined with private-sector ingenuity.

  • Exposure to radical thinkers, new ideas, and cutting-edge technologies.

  • Rigorous testing and iteration of solutions designed to drive fast results.

  • The ability to unearth unexpected ideas that provide low-risk chances to support long shots.

  • Evaluation data and powerful insights to measure the impact of your work.

How partners can support Challenge Works

Solving society’s biggest problems requires more than just funding; it requires an ecosystem of support. We collaborate with partners across every stage of the challenge lifecycle to ensure innovators have what they need to succeed. From co-creating prize concepts and facilitating rigorous testing environments, to offering mentorship and scaling final solutions, here is how you can lend your expertise to drive real-world impact.

Work with us

  • Co-create prize ideas with us

    We engage dynamic communities of thinkers and doers to proactively explore how prizes can tackle today’s biggest societal challenges. Through initiatives like our Search for the next Longitude Prize, we generate concepts that are rigorously stress-tested by leading experts. If you have a complex problem area that you think could benefit from an innovation challenge, we want to collaborate with you to shape it.

  • Fund or build a prize with us

    Our prizes are driven by powerful collaborations. We are constantly seeking the world’s most pressing problems to solve and the most ambitious partners to help us solve them. If you want to catalyse change and think your problem might be “prizeable,” let’s build something extraordinary together.

  • Scale prize impact

    Support doesn’t end at the awards ceremony. Partners help scale innovation with follow-on initiatives, helping alumni teams reach markets and unlocking long-term, systemic change.

  • Support prize operations

    Help bring prizes to life. You can support the rigorous testing and iteration of a challenge, join our expert judging panels, facilitate workshops, or help to upskill our teams.

  • Support competing teams

    Help innovators thrive by offering unparalleled support as teams progress through each stage. From press and networking to upskilling and access to tech, your support helps ideas scale beyond the lab.

What our partners say

We’ve had the privilege of collaborating with visionary organisations over the years. Here is what they have to say about partnering with us to drive innovation:

Ryan Klem, Toyota Mobility Foundation

Mobility Unlimited Challenge
"Our work with Challenge Works on the Mobility Unlimited challenge was critical for us on many fronts. The work allowed us to connect with end-users, entrepreneurs, advocates, practitioners, thought leaders, and SMEs across multiple disciplines. This diverse perspective brought new ways of thinking about old problems in the assistive technology space as well as our own perspective on mobility in a broader sense. Not only did the challenge highlight innovations in the space but helped raise awareness on the broader challenges that exist for many when it comes to living barrier free. Since we launched the challenge several years ago, it has served as a proof point to our commitment to mobility and a launching pad for others to connect with us in an expanded space. NESTA was really the driver to make this happen in a thoughtful and organized manner."

Pontus Westerberg, UN-Habitat

Climate Smart Cities Challenge
“Challenge Works have been an excellent challenge partner in the delivery of the competition phase of the Climate Smart Cities Challenge. They planned and delivered processes for selecting cities and innovators, coordinated the innovator selection process and led communications and outreach activities. We look forward to continuing to working with them in future innovation challenges”

Catherine Mohr, Intuitive Foundation

Global Surgical Training Challenge
"We chose to work with Challenge Works because of their deep experience in running these big multinational prizes in complex medical areas. The combination of being able to help us put an international judging panel together and being able to coordinate across their deep experience in how prizes should be structured were key reasons why we chose to work with Challenge Works, and it's been an excellent partnership."

John T. O'Brien, University of Cambridge

Longitude Prize on Dementia
"It has been a great pleasure working with Challenge Works on the Longitude Prize on Dementia. Their extensive experience has made the whole process, from inviting applications through to the initial selection of first stage awardees, seamless and efficient and makes it a pleasure to Chair the judging panel."

Thomas Schuurmans. Proportion Global

Afri-Plastics Challenge
"Our partnership with Challenge Works on the Afri-Plastics Challenge revealed much more than a one-winner scenario. Challenge Works is at the forefront of employing human-centered design (HCD) for impactful programs. They inspire the development sector by showcasing how HCD nurtures a profound understanding of societal issues, ignites innovative ideas and enables iterative learning cycles for everyone involved – and how to use that to build sustainable change."

Bespoke partnerships

At Challenge Works, we know that no two problems are the same. That’s why our partnerships are entirely bespoke, tailored to your organisation’s unique needs and the specific impact goals of the challenge. Explore how we’ve driven real-world change alongside our partners:

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AI generated image of the moon submerged in water with an astronaut standing in front

UK Space Agency, Canadian Space Agency & Challenge Works

The Aqualunar Challenge was a £1.2m international challenge prize to drive the creation of innovative technologies to make human habitation in space possible by finding ways to purify water buried beneath the Moon’s surface.

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Open Banking & Challenge Works

The Open Up 2020 Challenge highlighted open banking as a way to revolutionise financial services – giving people more control over their data.

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A selection of berries in plastic containers|A ground level shot of a brown soil path through rows of green plants

Weston Family Foundation & Challenge Works

The C$33m (£19m) programme aims to accelerate technology development in agriculture, creating innovative solutions that can extend the growing season of crops.

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