Mass Localism: A Way To Help Small Communities Solve Big Social Challenges

Innovation is critical in responding to today's social challenges such as climate change, an ageing population and a rise in long-term health conditions. But innovation needs to involve a wider range of actors and draw across a number of disciplines to respond to the complex, interdependent nature of these challenges. Just as the most forward thinking businesses are opening up their R&D processes to their suppliers and customers, so policymakers should look for solutions beyond established organisations and experts. They should look to citizens and communities.

Inspired by open innovation challenges such as the X-Prize and InnoCentive - which (currently) mostly focus on technological innovations - NESTA designed and launched the Big Green Challenge in 2007. The Big Green Challenge was a £1 million open innovation challenge prize for communities to tackle a social challenge. We developed a hybrid model that encouraged widespread responses and engagement with the challenge and supported a number of projects to test and develop their approaches.

One of the winning projects was a micro-hydro power scheme, creating a network of small providers in the rural green valleys of Wales. The entrepreneurial team have supported lots of other teams to become Community Interest Companies to generate their own power - and boost the local economy. Others included a carbon-neutral island in Scotland, a London urban farm and a household energy service in Oxford.

The Big Green Challenge was very successful and demonstrates the potential of an approach NESTA calls 'Mass Localism' - an approach to how governments can support more widespread, local innovation and achieve impact at scale.

This presentation will outline the Big Green Challenge approach in more detail as an open innovation challenge prize for a social issue. It will showcase some of the winning projects and present some recommendations and principles for other challenge areas and audiences.