Industry competes to solve difficult problems when money, prestige or access is up for grabs.
The America COMPETES Reauthorization Act, Public Law 111-358, is available to all federal agencies and invites ideas and solutions through crowdsourcing. Prize competitions are useful when ingenuity, flexibility, and collaboration are desired and other government contract instruments are not likely to attract sufficiently innovative solutions. Prize competitions are successful at attracting individuals, small disadvantaged businesses and nontraditional contractors. Prize competitions are not suited for routine services or well understood requirements.
Collects ideas and solutions from the public and encourages cross-sector collaboration to respond to ideation, design, and visualization problems. Applicable problem sets can arise from the business, data analytics, ideation, design, scientific, technology, software, and information technology sectors. Prizes can be monetary (above $1M cash prize with Head of Agency approval only) and non-monetary in nature (e.g., recognition, ability to participate in follow-on actions).
- Establishes an ambitious goal and pays only for success without having to predict which team or approach is most likely to succeed
- Reduces barriers to participation in an agile process, starting small with the ability to scale
- Better aligns risk/reward profiles with the way advanced technology industries seek compensation and profit
- Increases opportunities for crowdsourcing and participation for cross-functional teams to deliver creative solutions to agency needs
- Encourages partnerships and citizen-solvers to innovatively solve problems with breakthrough solutions
- Federal agencies create partnerships with other agencies and organizations (nonprofit and for-profit) and bring in expertise to (i) inform a prize "ask," (ii) think through evaluation criteria, (iii) judge submissions, (iv) serve as mentors to solvers, and (v) broaden communication channels
- Reduces innovators’ burden of intellectual property ownership requirements; allows government flexibility with regard to ownership of solutions.
- SMALL BUSINESS BENEFIT: Entrepreneurs and small businesses wishing to participate in federal procurement have the opportunity to gain experience with a challenge.
Since 2010, the U.S. government has run nearly 1,200 challenges in more than 100 federal agencies, and with solvers spanning the gamut between students and hobbyists to small business owners and academic researchers. Over the past ten years, prize competitions have become a proven way to increase innovation for the public, private, and philanthropic sectors. Today, incentivized, open competition has become a standard tool in every Federal agency’s toolbox for delivering more cost-effective and efficient services and advancing agencies’ core missions. Federal agencies have discovered that prizes and challenges allow them to:
• Expand the Federal government’s reach to citizen solvers and entrepreneurs of diverse backgrounds, skillsets, and experience
• Bring out-of-discipline perspectives to bear
• Increase cost-effectiveness to maximize the return on taxpayer dollars
• Inspire risk-taking by offering a level playing field through credible rules and robust judging mechanisms
