A CivTech Challenge is simply a problem that a public sector organisation would like to see solved.

We will help you develop that problem into a standard format that can be taken to market as an Open Challenge.

An Open Challenge approach is simply a process by which an organisation sets out a problem without prescribing a solution, and invites anyone — an individual, team or business — with a brilliant idea to submit a proposal into an open and fair competition. It’s a great way for the public sector to tap into the entire sum of innovation, creativity and ingenuity out there. For an innovative company or entrepreneur, it’s a great opportunity to create a product that solves a real problem, and win that valuable first customer.

Take a look at our Case Studies page for some examples of previous Challenges.

First, you need a problem you’d like solved! We can help turn this into a great brief — one that’s crystal clear, leaves plenty of room for innovation, and succinctly maps out the public and technical landscapes the solution will need to work within.

Then there’s money. Challenge Sponsors fund teams on the Exploration and Accelerator Stages. The total outlay for these first two Stages — assuming three teams on the Exploration stage, and one on the Accelerator — is £55,000 (plus VAT, if applicable). All CivTech Challenges are part of a research and development procurement process with a set maximum contract value, usually between £350k and £1.3m depending on the scope of the Challenge and likelihood of there being multiple, complimentary solutions. Following the Accelerator, there’s the option to move into a Pre-Commercial Agreement and access CivTech’s own fund, with a total value dependent on the scope of development work required within the procurement limits.

Knowledge, experience and data are vital. You’ll need to give the team access to the data they’ll need, and all your public sector knowledge, experience and insight — because real and meaningful co-production, and the sharing of ideas are the only way truly great solutions emerge. 

Finally, commitment. Everything depends on it. There is a considerable time commitment required. We tend to say you’ll need to allocate half a day a week during the Accelerator stage to work with your team — though we’ve found that many Challenge Sponsors decide to spend more time when they see the results that truly meaningful engagement can produce. And you’ll have the CivTech team helping, with all the hard-won experience we’ve got from many years in tech, creativity and business, and running the CivTech Innovation Flow for over a decade.

These are the things we ask prospective Challenge Sponsors to develop so we can shape a great brief together: 

What’s the narrative? What the problem is, its background and context, why it’s important, the benefits of solving it, and who would benefit. Why you’re focused on this Challenge, any attempts you’ve made to find a solution, and why they're not fit for purpose. 

Who are the end users? Are there user groups related to them? 

What would you like to see from the solution, and what will success look like? What is the one metric that matters? In other words, what specific thing can be measured that would indicate that the right product's being built? 

Are there existing systems — software, APIs and databases — the solution will need to work or integrate with?

What's in it for the successful solution provider? What’s the commercial opportunity, from direct, initial contracts to national and international markets? 

What resources will you provide? Of course, there’s money, data, knowledge and commitment. But what about other things such as interns, citizen groups, sales opportunities, additional domain expertise, field trips?

We use a standard contract to engage teams through the Exploration and Accelerator Stages. In return for the time and money invested, you get a perpetual royalty-free license to use the product being developed. 

If the Exploration and Accelerator Stages produce promising results, a Pre-Commercial Agreement can be negotiated to fund final development and roll out the product. Contracts become more flexible and bespoke at this stage, but the Challenge Sponsor will always benefit from royalty-free access to the product they’ve helped create.

We don’t take any equity in participating companies, and the IP they create remains their property — however Challenge Sponsors are granted a perpetual royalty-free licence to use the product for their intended purposes. 

It’s in everyone’s interest for the company to be able to exploit the IP in more widely, because a thriving company will be able to continue developing and supporting the product well into the future. And we’ve got a great track record in terms of businesses growing fast, winning both investment and contracts outwith the initial CivTech Challenge area, based on the products they’ve developed, the contacts they’ve made, and the reputation they’ve built. 

This is a two-part answer. First, the risk is that the proposed solution might not eventually pan out, in which case you’ve risked your outlay. But given that the CivTech programme is designed to give proposed solutions every chance of reaching fruition, the overwhelming majority of the proposed solutions have (so far) developed into worthwhile MVPs. So we’d say that this is a fairly low risk — and because the actual cash outlay is small and the payments are tranched, compared with alternative procurement methodologies we’d argue the risk is mitigated even further. The second part is this: given the modest outlay needed to explore solutions through CivTech, the speed with which they develop, and the learnings you’ll take away regardless of the outcome, betting everything on a conventional procurement could easily pose a far greater risk.

Accelerators are a widely-adopted approach to building products and businesses in very short periods of time. They typically involve a cohort of teams or companies working intensively against a common timetable of just a few months, before presenting their results in the hope of securing further funding. The first accelerator — Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator — launched in 2005, and the model quickly spread across the rest of the US, Europe and the world. Well-known companies such as Airbnb, Dropbox and Reddit can trace their roots back to accelerators — along with countless other hugely successful tech businesses.

The CivTech Accelerator was designed around this well-proven method, but with an approach carefully adapted to benefit the Scottish public sector. We are not led by an investor or corporation focussed on profit and shareholder value; instead, we’re focussed on creating better public services for Scotland, and opportunities for innovative teams and companies to win world-class early customers.

A private sector accelerator will typically see just 20% of its products succeed. CivTech turns this on its head; around 80% of our companies receive further funding and their products continue to be developed after the Accelerator. The vast majority remain in use many years later, expand into new markets, win further investment and become viable, successful businesses.

Fast fail is a concept that goes hand-in-hand with tech accelerators. The idea is that it’s better to establish quickly that something won’t work in practice than than spending years reaching the same conclusion through traditional incubation or procurement processes. This ethos applies to everything, including the product or service, the business model around it, and the team behind it. 

The advantages are that valuable resources — not just money — can be protected by limiting risks, and closing down non-viable projects quickly. For the entrepreneur, it’s a good thing because it avoids the financial and emotional strain of spending years trying to make something work when its destiny was highly unlikely to change.

So, while it’s called a fail, in many ways doing so fast is actually an all-round win. It’s something the tech sector is pretty good at, and an approach we think the public sector benefits from adopting.

We want the teams developing our solutions to be both tech savvy and business smart. After all, as a Challenge Sponsor you probably want to be working with a company that’s as well run as possible, growing, generating profit and creating jobs. So the Business Workshop System is designed to give teams — whatever their stage of business development, and whatever their past experience — the knowledge and expertise they need to do just that. This not only de-risks the Challenge, it also creates lifetime learning: the skills, knowledge and networks developed during the Accelerator will be really useful over the long term, and form a solid basis for further development.

An MVP is a Minimum Viable Product. It’s another insight from the tech industry, which recognises that in order to be useful, a product doesn’t need every possible function and feature — just the ones that will make it operationally useful and prove its worth. Depending on the Challenge, and depending on the proposal taken through to the Accelerator, a CivTech MVP might take different forms. Indeed, the full nature of the solution — and so the MVP — might not be apparent until some way into the Accelerator.

A Pre-Commercial Agreement (PCA) is a contractual agreement that enables further pre-commercial development work on the solution to your Challenge, to take the MVP developed in the Accelerator through to a commercially viable product. PCAs aren’t a guaranteed stage of the CivTech process and there is no obligation from anyone to enter into one. The decision to proceed with a PCA is typically based on the success of the MVP and the company’s proposed plans for the Pre-Commercial Stage. A PCA itself is negotiated between the company, CivTech and the Challenge Sponsor.