prizes and challenges

Eight Common Challenges to Scaling Innovation

Eight Common Challenges to Scaling Innovation

Implementing an innovative approach within the federal government takes relentlessness, stamina, and strategy. It can be incredibly lonely. You are often your own best champion. It can feel impossible-- like being the underdog trying to win a sporting match. But after all the frustrations and setbacks, when you win that first match it is also overwhelmingly satisfying.

But for the change agents in government, winning the first match is not enough. To make innovative approaches more routine, winning one match is just the beginning. The scaling challenge begins when you try to win over and over—and when you try to get more people to join your team.

Incentivizing Innovation: A New Toolkit for Federal Agencies

Incentivizing Innovation: A New Toolkit for Federal Agencies

Today, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the General Services Administration (GSA) are launching a new Challenges and Prizes Toolkit to help Federal agencies increase the use and sophistication of incentive prizes even further.

Building Momentum for Open Innovation

Building Momentum for Open Innovation

The White House, the Federal Community of Practice on Citizen Science and Crowdsourcing (CCS), and the General Services Administration (GSA)’s Challenge.gov program have been working diligently over the last two years to deliver on previous commitments. This work was highlighted in a series of events this fall designed to build momentum both within and outside the Federal government for more ambitious, cross-sector applications of open innovation approaches.

The People and Teams that Power High-Impact Incentive Prizes

The Administration is helping organize two events this week to celebrate the success of Challenge.gov, recognize the importance of public-sector prizes, and catalyze the next-generation of ambitious prizes. On Wednesday, October 7, the White House, the Case Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, and Georgetown University will host an event titled “All Hands on Deck: Solving Complex Problems through Prizes and Challenges” that will provide Federal, state, and local government leaders and private-sector supporters with information and tools on how to effectively use incentive prizes to improve outcomes in addressing complex social, policy, and technological challenges in national priority areas. On Thursday, October 8, the General Services Administration will host a community of more than 300 prize practitioners to celebrate the great accomplishments of public-sector prizes at a five-year anniversary event for Challenge.gov.

This October, the White House Celebrates Over $150 Million in Prize Competitions Since 2010

This October, the White House Celebrates Over $150 Million in Prize Competitions Since 2010

To celebrate the accomplishments of prize competitions and to inspire the next generation of ambitious, cross-sector prizes, the White House, the General Services Administration (GSA), nonprofits, and academic institutions will host back-to-back events in Washington, DC, one on October 7 and the other on October 8, in Washington DC.  These two events will highlight the impact of open innovation in the Federal government and across sectors, as well as celebrate the successes of Challenge.gov

Accelerating the Use of Prizes to Address Tough Challenges

To build on momentum, the Administration will hold an event this fall to highlight the role that prizes play in solving critical national and global issues. The event will showcase public- and private-sector relevant commitments from Federal, state, and local agencies, companies, foundations, universities, and non-profits. 

Public Sector Prizes and Challenges Show Increased Sophistication, Ambition and Use: A Fiscal Year 2014 Progress Report

Public Sector Prizes and Challenges Show Increased Sophistication, Ambition and Use: A Fiscal Year 2014 Progress Report

Today, OSTP released its fourth annual comprehensive report detailing the use of prize competitions and challenges by Federal agencies to spur innovation, engage citizen solvers, address tough problems, and advance their core missions. This report details the remarkable results from 97 prize competitions and challenges offered by 30 agencies under a variety of authorities in FY 2014 as required by Section 105 of the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (COMPETES) added Section 24 (Prize Competitions) to the Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation Act of 1980 (Stevenson-Wydler).

21st-Century Public Servants: Using Prizes and Challenges to Spur Innovation

21st-Century Public Servants: Using Prizes and Challenges to Spur Innovation

Last month, the Challenge.gov program at the General Services Administration (GSA), the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)’s Innovation Lab, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and a core team of Federal leaders in the prize-practitioner community began collaborating with the Federal Community of Practice for Challenges and Prizes to develop the other half of the open innovation toolkit, the prizes and challenges toolkit. In developing this toolkit, OSTP and GSA are thinking not only about the information and process resources that would be helpful to empower 21st-century public servants using these tools, but also how we help connect these people to one another to add another meaningful layer to the learning environment.

Featured in Popular Mechanics: How to Make NASA Cool Again

  Photo Courtesy of Philip Friedman

I am honored to be featured in the the August 2014 issue of Popular Mechanics. This issue has a series about "How to Make Anything". NASA's work in prizes, challenges and crowdsourcing is featured in a piece entitled: "How to Make NASA Cool Again".

Here's the text:

"At some point between the Challenger explosion in 1986 and the end of the manned shuttle program in 2011, NASA became uncool. Once regarded as the wild geniuses leading us bravely into the future, the agency earned a reputation as insular, wasteful, and out of touch.

Naturally, they're looking to change that perception. The agency recently expanded its use of challenges and crowdsourcing to include more opportunities for regular Joes (citizen scientists, if you can bear the term) to submit their ideas. In 2012, it also hired Jenn Gustetic, a vivacious woman with an aerospace engineering degree and a master's in technology policy from MIT, to engage the public as the first-ever Challenges and Prizes program executive.

In this role, Gustetic, 32, uses her brains, charm, and wicked networking skills to increase grassroots participation in NASA's far-ranging mission. In the process, she's breaking down the wall that once separated a massive bureaucracy from the people it was supposed to serve. "It's my role to engage the public and put together nontraditional alliances to solve tough technology problems," she says. "NASA is opening itself up. We're inviting the public to be a meaningful participant in our business, our projects. This wasn't the way things were done, but it's the norm now."

One little problem Gustetic is helping to solve is the threat of an asteroid impact, which NASA has deemed worthy of intensive study as part of a larger initiative that includes not only redirecting space rocks but also sending humans to study them. The Asteroid Data Hunter contest, which wrapped in August, offered awards of up to $35,000 to individuals who advance the development of algorithms to identify asteroids in imagery from ground-based telescopes.

Another of Gustetic's responsibilities is to rally teams for NASA's International Space Apps Challenge. This year, more than 8,000 people in 95 cities took part in the third annual two-day hackathon to develop tech related to deep-space exploration, manned missions, rovers and more. "It was a historic collaboration between a government and the public," says Mike Caprio, cofounder of Space Apps NYC, the main stage of this year's event. Teams of technologists of every stripe, from computer programmers to physicists, arrived at universities and labs all over the world to compete. After a long weekend, a few left with impressive CV fodder. The rest left impressed with their host."