I am a big fan of Grand Challenges.
I was super motivated when reading about John Harrison, a self-taught engineer (carpenter) in the 18th century, who won the longitude reward through decades of perfecting clockmaking skills. I also watched several DARPA Challenges with great interests. I have participated in, for three years, NASA’s Centennial Challenge on Sample Return Robot. Those three years left me with countless memorable moments to be enjoyed for the rest of my life.
What I like most about Grand Challenges is that they give people excitement and hope. Grand Challenges allow someone, who otherwise would not be known by people, such as John Harrison and Charles Lindbergh, to shine through their courage, dedication, and talent. They also can accelerate technology development, by bringing together a broader range of conventional and unconventional innovators and solutions.
However, many Grand Challenges failed to achieve these effects, for a variety of reasons. Here are a few factors I think maybe worth considering when designing a new Challenge.
- It needs to be relevant. If a Challenge addresses one of humanity’s most urgent needs, more people would likely to follow and participate.
- It must be a Challenge. A Grand Challenge needs to be hard. It should be a jump from any of our known abilities. It may sound impossible at first, but It’s so cool that it makes people imagine. The Challenge shall also not be too big a jump, otherwise everyone would fail (which is an acceptable but not desirable outcome).
- The Challenge description must be clear, rigorous, and stable. Like any games, there should be no ambiguity and room for interpretation. The actual tests must also precisely match the description. Unfortunately, quite often, the organizers did not fully think through all the issues at the beginning. They would come up with a set of rules that cause confusions (and potentially unfairness) and then they dumb down the challenge after most participants failed (this happens more often than you may want to believe!).
- Human factors must be kept at a minimum. One of the Grand Challenge’s greatest strengths is that it gives everyone a fair chance. You do not have to be a world renown thinker/scientist/engineer, you do not have to be rich, you do not even need to have a stable job; as long as you have a good idea, the skills, and the will (easy to say than done), you have your fair chance of winning. The success of a Grand Challenge should be defined by beating the problem, not anyone or anything else. If we allowed humans (e.g., the Challenge organizers) to pick winners based on their pre-conceived ways of solving the problem, John Harrison would had no chance against big name astronomers at the time (note: the Longitude Board, including Newton’s preference on finding an astronomy-based solution did cause hardship to Harrison for many years…). Let the results speak for themselves!
- Teams shall come up with their own resources, at least initially. This one may sound strange to you. Would it not be rewarding people with deeper pockets and leave the poor guys out of the fight? It might, but let’s consider the alternatives for a moment. What if the organizer picks a few promising teams, give each of them a few $M, so they don’t have to be sidetracked by fund raising and other resource constraints? The question would then be: based on what criteria? prestige? track-record? how likely a team’s idea may work? If you read the history of Grand Challenges, you would know that none of these are reliable indicators of success. What this funding approach does is effective disincentivize the selected teams to push envelopes hard (they already have the cake; the final Challenge prize is just the icing) and block out all other competitors. In my opinion, just like any startups, each team needs to fight for its own survival the entire time. If you think you have a good idea, try to convince someone to fund you, or join another team with adequate resources. I think the phased approach being used by NASA Centennial Challenges is very good. Let teams compete for some initial phases (e.g., a simplified Challenge with a low-entry barrier) on their own dime, provide teams some funds once passed the initial phase. This record of success also helps teams to raise more funds from other sources.
- Give it a longer time frame. Most government funding mechanism have a short time horizon, but that is not necessarily good for getting the best outcomes. If a problem is of such importance to the society (e.g., determining longitude), why not keep the challenge alive for decades until it’s solved (luckily, it was!)? Short term focus leads to more applied solutions, discourages risky/crazy ideas, and more likely leads to the picking of lower-hanging fruits. Grand challenges for picking lower-hanging fruits? Does not sound good!
- Follow up after the challenge. Don’t let the whole thing ends the moment a victory is declared. Each participant probably has developed something unique/valuable; creating mechanisms (with funding) to support them working together for a little while may spark more innovations.
Of course, we all live within the real-world constraints. I will continue to be excited whenever a new Challenge is announced!