Helping innovators scale: Creating the Rapid Recovery Network

In order to help innovators support as many people as possible during the Challenge, the Rapid Recovery team established a Network to help facilitate a wider outreach.

The Rapid Recovery Challenge was designed to help as many people as possible recover from the economic shock resulting from COVID-19, particularly those who were already in precarious positions. We asked our finalist innovators to meet five evenly weighted assessment criteria, as well as reaching 10,000+ people with their solution by September 2021. From being named as finalists to the announcement of the winning teams, the cohort of six finalists had four months to hit this scaling target.

When setting up the Challenge, we wanted to include assistance that helped our innovators reach these scaling targets One way we did this was by creating the Rapid Recovery Network. The Network’s aim was to connect individuals and communities most affected by the economic impact of COVID-19 directly with the Rapid Recovery Challenge innovators and their solutions.

Who is in the network?

We reached out to organisations who we knew had great connections with target groups of the challenge;  anyone from supermarkets to housing associations, local councils to energy suppliers, small to large charities and many more. We held an information session to introduce potential Network members to the six finalist solutions, then we followed up with a simple sign up process to bring network members onboard to help with the next few months of scaling.

What did those who joined the Network gain?

Network members gained access to six out-of-the-box innovative solutions – tried and tested ready-to-use tools and services which aimed to help with personal finance and job recovery. They also got to join a collective of other organisations working to improve the financial and employment prospects of individuals and communities across the UK, and had the opportunity to feed into the RRC thought leadership and recommendations piece that we published as part of the Challenge.

How did it work?

Once we had organisations signed up to the Network, we issued information about the six solutions and how they might apply to the various audiences each Network member worked with. We encouraged organisations to reach out to innovators as well as making a number of 1-2-1 introductions. We also hosted an information event on the six tools where Network members could learn exactly how the tools work and pose any questions they had to the teams.

What was the impact?

The matching process worked really well – we directly connected many individual innovators with Network members who then went on to form relationships and helped innovators share information about their tools with key end users. We also encouraged all Network members to reach out to their audiences in the way they do best, whether that be sharing information about these tools and services in their, social media, website or newsletters, making the tools available to their end-users at point of service, in their buildings or in conversations, workshops or events.

For a new initiative conducted over a short three month period we were really happy with the number of network organisations we engaged. We found that both parties (innovators and network members) were really interested in learning about each other, supporting one another and that the interest and payoff was reciprocal.

There were, of course, plenty of learnings along the way, which we will be taking into consideration for future challenge prizes.

How could networks work for Nesta Challenges?

We believe networks such as the Rapid Recovery Network could be hugely beneficial for future challenge prizes. A nurtured network can provide a strong pipeline of targeted audiences (be that B2C or B2B) for the portfolio of innovative solutions being developed across Nesta Challenges, which could be an incredibly powerful tool in distribution plans for solutions at all stages of their development – from start-up to spin-out.

In the coming months, we’ll be undertaking some more thinking on how networks like this can work in a challenge prize context and how they add to our ability to effect systems change. We’re keen to talk to anyone out there who has experience of running similar networks or who has ideas on how networks like these can be most effective.