The ‘grand challenge’ approach

Are you up for a challenge? The American Chamber of Commerce is supporting nationally agreed ‘grand challenges’ as a way of boosting research, development and innovation activities in Ireland.

Just what those challenges might be is up for grabs. Early feedback from a wide variety of stakeholders has led to everything from promoting farms as centres of innovation to the elimination of waste in the food supply chain or making Ireland the world’s healthiest nation.

Other areas of interest captured so far include eliminating cash, or making Ireland the best country in the world in which to grow old.

Though diverse, what all suggestions have in common is that they should capture the nation’s imagination and succeed in bringing together Government, academia, multinational companies, small and medium-sized companies, entrepreneurs and communities.

The American Chamber believes that one of Ireland’s strategic innovation goals should be to attract public-private investment, through already proven partnerships between US foreign direct investment, Ireland’s research development and innovation system, the indigenous enterprise sector and the wider public sector.

Doing so would “double national spending on RDI by 2025,” says Mark Gantly, senior R&D director Hewlett Packard Enterprise and chair of the American Chamber Research, Development & Innovation Leadership Forum.

Grand challenge programmes are already in operation around the world. In the UK, for example, the Longitude Prize has a £10 million fund that rewards innovations which protect antibiotic power for future generations. In the US, the Sun Shot Initiative is a federal government programme seeking to make solar energy more affordable.

Denmark is often cited as a stand-out nation in terms of its commitment to finding innovate solutions to national problems. For its part, Ireland, which shares a similar population size, trails the innovation investment levels of its peers, with investment of just 1.5 per cent of GDP.

The American Chamber has been promoting challenge-centric funding as a way of remedying this for a number of years.

In 2015 it published a paper, Ireland's Innovation Pathway to 2025, which set out its ambition for Ireland to become a global leader in its use. It followed this with an extensive outreach process, involving a series of one-to-one interviews held to identify possible challenges, such as those mentioned above.

In May 2018, Science Foundation Ireland hosted a “think-in” in Croke Park, bringing together a group of leaders from industry and public-sector organisations to participate in the development of a new challenge-based funding programme.

Funding proposals

The aim was to identify the kind of visionary, inspirational and achievable challenges that would be suitable for funding proposals.

Speaking at the think-in, director general of Science Foundation Ireland and chief scientific advisor to the Government Prof Mark Ferguson said: “Challenge-based funding is an initiative Science Foundation Ireland has been pursuing for some time. This ‘defined challenge’ form of funding will sit complementary to the foundation’s conventional funding programmes and we are aiming to begin reviewing proposals as soon as possible this year.”

It’s a form of funding that is highly inclusive and will involve participants from industry, academia, the public sector, regulation, and innovation, he said. “History has shown us that solutions to grand challenges often arise outside of the mainstream – we hope to bring some of the more non-traditional, yet highly innovative, voices into the research milieu.”

The American Chamber's report, Establishing a Grand Innovation Challenge Process for Ireland, also highlighted the fact that Ireland's innovation investment levels lag those of other leading innovative nations, making engagement in public/private partnerships a valuable model for driving the country's innovation-led economy.

“The American Chamber of Commerce is delighted to be partnering with Science Foundation Ireland on this exciting new funding programme,” says Mark Gantly.

“Ireland is uniquely placed to capitalise on the true value of challenge-based funding. The ability to bring together so many thought leaders from various backgrounds and the well-established collaborative nature of the Irish research community allows for greater opportunities in solving economic and societal challenges on a country-wide scale. The Government has committed to delivering change through the new €500 million disruptive innovation fund – it is important that industry likewise responds.”