Shooting for the moon: How challenge prizes can diversify innovation for more social impact

Tris Dyson

Innovation can be directed towards the issues that matter most; this is now a defining principle of government-funded R&D. But some lessons of the past decades have fallen by the wayside, says Nesta Challenges founder Tris Dyson. Challenges offer better value for money, more diversity of approaches, and a means to shape markets ripe for development; from vehicle design to wave energy to tackling gender diversity in industry, they could help provide the moonshot advances that society needs.