By Siobhán Gibney Gomis at OmniCompete

Almost 300 years after a prize competition was established to find a practical way to measure a ship’s longitude, challenges and competitions are being revived as an effective way to drive innovation across a wide range of sectors.

Compared to other innovation drivers, such as grants and contracts, properly-designed prize competitions offer a level playing field, a transparent judging process and flexibility to enable maximum creativity. Perhaps most exciting is the ability of prize competitions to attract innovators from non-traditional sectors. Finding ‘black swans’ is often the key to uncovering disruptive technologies that have social and security impacts.

This is nicely illustrated by the case of a small Ghanaian enterprise, mPedigree. Established in 2007, mPedigree aims to use electronic resources to combat the counterfeit drug trade, which kills over 700,000 people around the world annually. Partnering with telecommunication companies and large pharmaceuticals, Bright Simons and his team have developed a simple yet effective system: cooperating pharmaceuticals include a scratch code on their medicine packaging. Under the scratch code, consumers find an ID number, which they text to a toll-free validation system. Within minutes, they receive a response confirming the authenticity of the purchased drug. In 2010, mPedigree won OmniCompete’s Global Security Challenge (GSC), an annual prize competition that splits a $500,000 prize fund between the most innovative startup and SME.

While the entrants in the GSC don’t need to have a security focus, their technologies must have security applications. In the case of mPedigree, the connection is thus: allowing consumers to identify counterfeit medicine saves lives, though most observers wouldn’t brand mPedigree as a security company. With the prize fund and publicity achieved through the GSC and other awards, mPedigree has taken great steps in the past twelve months, including expansion to Kenya and beyond Africa to India as well. Six months after winning the biggest annual security award, mPedigree was the subject of a collective impact case study in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

There are not many companies that could manage such a feat, but prize competitions are an excellent way to find technologies and enterprises which have invaluable benefits from both a social and security perspective. When we think of social innovation, we often think first of strategies, concepts and processes, rather than the hi-tech sphere. However, many of these strategies and processes depend on accessible technology.

Sometimes the best way to find what you’re looking for, particularly if you’re seeking something exceptional, is to steer clear of the ‘usual suspects’. By designing a prize competition to address the raw need you’re trying to address, and marketing the competition without sector specific language, organisations can attract innovators they would have never reached, and thereby, solutions they would never have found. London-based OmniCompete strongly advocates for this abstraction model, and as the largest European competition provider, it has been leading the drive for more prize competitions in Europe.

The United States Government has been involved in prize competitions for at least half a decade, but now Europe is beginning to reapply this model as well. Already heavily engaged with US Departments to run the biggest annual security challenge and a cutting-edge energy storage challenge, OmniCompete’s subsidiary is currently leading the European Commission’s FP7 Project “European Security Challenge”. This project calls for an examination of prize competitions compared to other innovation drivers, and the design of three competitions that could be executed in the future. As part of this project, OmniCompete and partners hosted the Prize Summit in London earlier this year, bringing together academics, practitioners and interested parties to discuss and evaluate the prize industry and its recent progress. This first ever international summit on prize competitions attracted representatives from a wide range of sectors institutions, including security, energy, social innovation; think-tanks, foundations, government and big industry, coming from across Europe and North America. (The summary of key debates is available online.)

As Europe begins to adopt prize competitions, European innovators are performing increasingly well in existing challenges. In 2009, British SME Kromek became one of the first European companies to win the Global Security Challenge, a competition previously dominated by American enterprises. Staying true to the cross-sector nature of competition winners, Kromek’s scanning technology can detect liquid explosives in airports, but also improve cancer screening in hospitals. This year’s Global Security Challenge received double the number of UK entries to previous years, warranting the first ever UK Regional Final.

In addition to work with the European Commission, OmniCompete has powered competitions for the UK Government (INSTINCT’s Technology Demonstrators), United Business Media and the European Euclid network. Euclid’s recent Social Innovation for Naples competitions provide an effective example of how the tools used to run hi-tech security and energy challenges are applicable to drastically different scenarios. The Naples competitions challenged entrants to develop sustainable solutions to community issues in the Italian city. OmniCompete’s platform, procedures and tools provided structure and expertise to this unique concept. The finals will take place on 21-23 September in Naples, Italy, where twelve finalists, ten of which are European, will present their ideas and be awarded.

On 24 & 25 October, London will play host to PitchLive, a two-day innovation marketplace combining the finals of four international challenges, where over $750,000 in prize funds will be awarded. Entrepreneurs, innovators, investors and interested parties from around the world will gather to experience and celebrate prize competitions. Prize competitions produce remarkable results – previously undiscovered technologies are rewarded, innovations are applied to non-traditional sectors, and social goals can be met at the same time.

To receive a 10% discount on your PitchLive ticket, please email pitchlive@omnicompete.com and quote “SIX”. This offer expires 1 October 2011.