Mission-driven challenge prizes can accelerate Labour’s industrial strategy for Britain
9 July 2024
The challenges facing the UK’s new government are many and urgent. Keir Starmer has won a landslide for his party in parliament, but with the economy nursing the bruises of recent years, the health service in crisis and struggling to look after an ageing population, geopolitical pressures creating global volatility, and the impacts of climate change increasing in severity, he needs much more than MPs on his side.
The new government has stated its approach will be “mission-driven”. It says that it wants ambitious, measurable, long-term, purpose driven objectives, putting power into communities and harnessing technology to get the country on track. Top of the agenda is to kick start the economy and make Britain a clean energy superpower.
If it wants to move quickly and truly make an impact, the new government should look to challenge prizes as a powerful tool to achieve the ambitions of a mission-led industrial strategy.
“Innovation will be key to the governments ambitions for the country and its mission for net zero”
Challenge prizes incentivise innovators from multiple disciplines to focus their attention on big problems where solutions have been in short supply. They bring together the private and public sector and combine the best of academic research excellence with business ingenuity and entrepreneurialism.
They shine a spotlight on an issue, attracting new entrants who would never have worked on the problem previously. They level the playing field for unknown and untested innovators who are overlooked by typical funding that is too often hoovered up by a few big companies and consultancies. Challenge prizes open up access to entrepreneurs, start-ups and SMEs, creating opportunity beyond a handful of dominant players.
The government is not inheriting a bountiful economy, it must tread very carefully when directing public money. Innovation will be key to its ambitions for the country and its mission for net zero – but innovation comes with a price tag.
The consequence is that funding goes to those well-known engineering consultancies and big tech firms who appear, on paper, to be the least risky partners. However, they are not necessarily achieving the cutting-edge breakthroughs we sorely need as a nation.
Grants are awarded for the promise of future innovation that may or may not come to fruition. Challenge prizes, by design, de-risk investment in unknown and untested innovators because they reward results.
They incentivise and support multiple ideas to progress through the stages of a competition, bolstered with seed funding and expert support, whittling entrants down to semi-finalists and finalists within ambitious timelines. The grand prize is awarded to the best solution, only after it is proven to work.
This approach means that the government can direct funding to the best and most effective ideas, regardless of the name-recognition of the company or how well connected it is. More than that, prizes are a highly effective mechanism for using public money to attract private investment in solving an issue. Importantly, they leave a long-term legacy of multiple successful businesses beyond just the winner, all working to solve the problem that the prize focused them on.
The Longitude Prize on AMR is a great example of this. It offered an £8m reward to a team of innovators who could develop a rapid diagnostic test to identify the presence of a bacterial infection and the right antibiotic to prescribe in under an hour. This is key to slowing the rise of superbugs – an issue on course to kill 10 million people a year by 2050.
Current testing for infections takes 2-3 days to produce a result; this is too long for a doctor or for a patient in pain. The consequence is doctors prescribe antibiotics based on symptoms when they may not be necessary or may be the wrong treatment.
Last month we announced the winner of a prize which has developed a test for UTIs that can detect a bacterial infection in 15 minutes and identify the right antibiotic to prescribe in 45 minutes. This will transform treatment for UTIs – an issue that will impact 50-60% of women in their lifetime – and help prevent inappropriate prescriptions of antibiotics that cause the evolution of superbugs.
The Longitude Prize on AMR was an international challenge prize, and while the winners came from Sweden, multiple British companies that were established because of the prize’s support are also now close to market with breakthrough products, including Llusern Scientific in Cardiff.
“The new government should look to challenge prizes to incentivise and reward the cutting-edge innovations”
“Levelling-up” was a Boris buzzword, but there is a chance right now to really deliver the change that underserved and neglected regions of the country need through a solid industrial strategy that champions innovation and innovators across the whole of the country. The new government must lift up the economy for everyone by creating the conditions that mean a start-up in Cumbria has the same opportunity to succeed as a conglomerate in Cambridge.
The previous government used challenge prizes sporadically, despite their track record of success. The Manchester Prize is one that the new government has inherited, where British AI pioneers are developing new technologies to support the environment and national infrastructure. The Longitude Prize on Dementia is rewarding assistive technologies for people living with dementia to maintain their independence with finalists announced this Autumn. However, when we look across the Atlantic, the US and Canadian governments embed challenge prizes across every part of government to unlock the best innovation.
Keir Starmer and his cabinet have an unenviable mountain to climb. The new government should look to challenge prizes – in particular ultra-ambitious Longitude Prizes – to incentivise and reward the cutting-edge innovations that the country needs to kick start the economy, achieve net zero, keep us healthier and improve the lives of everyone in Britain.
