Prize contests have sparked historical technological breakthroughs, such as the first non-stop flight from New York to Paris, the first gasoline powered-automobile, and even margarine. During the last 15 years, governments and philanthropists have increasingly held prize contests — often called innovation challenges — to spark creative solutions to thorny social problems, from nutrient pollution in U.S. waterways to the $118 million AgResults global initiative.
 
But despite hundreds of recent innovation challenges, we have limited information about their impact, as only a fraction have been systematically evaluated. In late 2016, the U.S. Government asked Abt Global to propose a framework and key questions for rigorously evaluating innovation challenges. This framework — based on Abt’s work to evaluate brucellosis vaccine development under AgResults — can be applied to any innovation challenge to determine if it’s the best approach to solve a problem.

Our brief includes the framework and key questions about performance, cost, design and implementation, along with examples of evaluation approaches.