The craft of incentive prize design has been saved
Take a deeper dive into tactical guidance on how to link outcomes with challenge design.
This appendix provides additional guidance on how to link outcomes with challenge design, including tactical considerations for each of the six outcomes. Designers are more frequently structuring prizes for multiple outcomes, which requires blending of design elements and recognizing the trade-offs between the elements and the outcomes themselves. The US Department of Labor’s Equal Pay App Challenge is a good illustration of a multiple-outcome prize. It encouraged the development of a web application and seeks to raise awareness about differing levels of pay between men and women. This challenge offered an interesting mix of incentives: a grand prize of five scholarships, an immersive program for digital entrepreneurs, and three other recognition prizes—conversation with an eminent social enterprise leader, nonprofit adoption of the app, and an accelerator program to launch the app publicly. This mix of incentives drew app developers to the challenge but also raised public interest in this issue. The challenge is a part of a larger portfolio approach that the US government is pursuing to raise awareness about the pay gap through legislation, executive orders, and task forces.
Our Challenge.gov data analysis revealed a pattern of challenges that seek a combination of outcomes across the two dimensions discussed in this report—developing ideas, technologies, products, or services and engaging people, organizations, and communities. More specifically, designers often pair attracting new ideas with raising awareness and developing prototypes and pilots with mobilizing action. When designers create these pairings, they often focus on evaluation criteria and prize structure as the most important design elements.
Common pitfalls: Poorly structured problem statements, lack of planning, and solicitation of non-workable solutions are common pitfalls associated with the design of challenges focused on attracting new ideas. Designers should adopt the mentality that the solutions generated are the first step in a series of portfolio prizes and other tools for driving innovation that will advance in maturity and complexity toward stimulating markets.
Design elements | Design strategic considerations | Tactical guidance |
Resources | Guard against the development of overly narrow problem statements. Use external expertise to design problem statements that will lead to broadly workable solutions. |
|
Evaluation | Structure format of participant submissions for ease of evaluation. Given the low barriers to entry for the submission of new ideas, work to ensure that the evaluation period is not so lengthy that it deteriorates the experience of the participants. |
|
Motivators | Plan in advance for future rounds of the challenge, which will focus on outcomes of increasing complexity. Create excitement around the problem by guiding the formation of a vibrant community of participants. |
|
Structure | Develop mechanisms prior to the launch of the challenge to support participants in revising ideas if initial submissions do not meet expectations. |
|
Communications | Focus on building a strong brand around the challenge from the outset. A strong brand will increase the size and diversity of the participant community and the value of recognition to winners. |
|
Additional examples:
Common pitfalls: Relying on the purse—even a large one—as a sole means of motivating participants is a common pitfall of designers seeking to build prototypes or launch pilots. There should be significant emphasis on complementary motivators (for example, the recognition, networking opportunities, and investment counseling) that will encourage participants to put their own capital at risk. Designers should recognize that they will need to study their potential participants to understand their constraints, opportunities, and impact on outcomes. Designers should also consider customizing communications to particular participant communities.
Design elements | Design strategic considerations | Tactical guidance |
Resources | Build an understanding of the landscape of potential challenge participants, in order to appropriately shape purse size and problem statements.Develop detailed plans for the use of testing facilities early in the design process to fully understand the impact on the cost, length, and fairness of evaluating solutions. |
|
Evaluation | Focus on identifying and rewarding both the best technical solution and the solution with the best commercialization prospects. They are not always the same and both are necessary for long-term success of the prize. |
|
Motivators | Vary motivators based upon the community of participants. Designers should ensure that they build an understanding of the potential participants and adjust motivators as necessary. |
|
Structure | Structure the challenge around the technological maturity of the desired outcome. Less mature models will require additional challenge rounds and development time. |
|
Communications | Develop a targeted and extended communication strategy that consists of multiple channels and outreach methods. Length of the communications strategy is longer than challenges focused on attracting ideas and must sustain excitement. |
|
Additional examples:
Common pitfalls: Designers working on challenges to stimulate markets should have a clear understanding of market gaps or failures, and what would motivate new or existing market actors to fill or overcome them. Without understanding how these markets work, designers risk incenting participants to engage in market behaviors that are unrealistic, unprofitable, and unscalable.
Design elements | Design strategic considerations | Tactical guidance |
Resources | Engage a broad community of external experts through an advisory board to design a challenge focused on addressing specific challenges preventing market development or growth. |
|
Evaluation | Create mechanisms to avoid potential conflicts of interest between sponsors and participants and limit gaming of the rules and evaluation criteria from participants.
|
|
Motivators | Create motivators for the participants, judges, and experts due to the heavy cost and time investment for all. |
|
Structure | Establish a structure that permits iterative feedback between designers and participants. Reward participants for successfully achieving technical and economic milestones to maintain interest and reduce risk. |
|
Communications | Hire expertise needed to drive a successful public relations campaign and create an appealing narrative around the challenge to gain public interest. |
|
Additional examples:
Common pitfalls: In a crowded media environment, designers seeking to use challenges to raise awareness about an issue face the difficulty of customizing their messages and getting them to the target audience. Often, these designers fall into the trap of merely targeting the broadest possible audience in the hope that their target audience will somehow catch on. It is critical for designers to appropriately segment the audience for their challenge and build campaigns specifically related to the media consumed by that audience. Additionally, designers ignore post-award communications at their own peril, as they may represent the greatest opportunity to achieve the desired increase in awareness.
Design elements | Design strategic considerations | Tactical guidance |
Resources | Build communications and marketing capabilities into administration staff core capabilities. |
|
Evaluation | Focus evaluation criteria on selecting participants that aid in increasing problem awareness rather those that a solely deliver the best or most-refined solution. |
|
Motivators | Develop understanding of the non-economic incentives that drive the target audience participation. |
|
Structure | Pair challenge outcomes with an additional target outcome to maximize reach and impact. |
|
Communications | Create a multi-channel marketing campaign to account for crowded media markets. |
|
Additional examples:
Common pitfalls: Designers should be careful not to believe that recruiting participants into a challenge is sufficient to mobilize action. Getting participants and larger audiences to act typically requires facilitating the formation of new communities. Designers also need the credibility to incent participants to act in new ways. For this, branding and clear messaging are critical.
Design elements | Design strategic considerations | Tactical guidance |
Resources | Capitalize on the energy of existing movements, initiatives, and partners to supplement challenge infrastructure. |
|
Evaluation | Create definitive measures of progress to determine success of the challenge and provide opportunities to revise and improve future challenges. |
|
Motivators | Incorporate a high degree of competitor collaboration while recognizing the trade-off between encouraging teams and maintaining challenge.11Incorporate incentives that will build the skills of participants (for example, expert coaching, speaking opportunities, etc.). |
|
Structure | Structure forums for meaningful personal interaction. Mobilizing action requires trust and commitment that may be best suited for direct contact. Structure forums for meaningful personal interaction. Mobilizing action requires trust and commitment that may be best suited for direct contact. |
|
Communications | Create an environment to generate a dialogue between participants and the broader community. |
|
Additional examples:
Common pitfalls: Inspiring transformation requires scaling and institutionalizing behavioral change. This can often be achieved through centralized coordination and a top-down approach. On the other hand, transformation can also be achieved through decentralized or grassroots action. Effective designers are aware of both means, do not conflate them, and are intentional about which elements they use to evoke change.
Design elements | Design strategic considerations | Tactical guidance |
Resources | Select partners with significant public recognition and the ability to capture attention on a broad scale. |
|
Evaluation | Develop meaningful measures to act as the new basis for discussion and progress around the problem. |
|
Motivators | Engage neutrally viewed surrogates or spokespeople to promote the challenge. Look to reduce potentially divisive politics around the problem being addressed and focus on transforming behavior. |
|
Structure | Develop a reoccurring challenge to maximize impact by continuing broad dialogue around the transformation outcome and through progressively more competitive evaluation criteria. |
|
Communications | Plan on a sustained marketing effort that includes traditional and non-traditional marketing tactics. |
|
Additional examples:
Read the full report on The craft of incentive prize design.