During the Discovery Challenge, we invited innovative thinkers from across industry, academia and civil society to propose new cross-sector Smart Data use case ideas that could make a difference for consumers or small businesses and for wider society.
In return, they joined an emerging community of organisations seeking to drive Smart Data forward, and helped shape a future Smart Data challenge prize.
Between 26 October and 8 December 2023 we ran an open call for cross-sector Smart Data use case ideas. We wanted individuals and organisations to share their bold cross-sector use case ideas for a consumer-driven Smart Data economy.
The most promising cross-sector use case ideas submitted in the open call were then selected by an expert panel and further defined with the help of expert input. The Discovery Challenge culminated in a hybrid event on Thursday 21 March 2024, during which the most promising ideas were pitched to an audience of industry experts.
The four teams with the best ideas were then named as the winners, and given a prize of £5,000.
We were looking for cross-sector use case ideas that used data from at least one of the following five sectors:
In addition, use case ideas might have used other sources of publicly held or open data, or data that might be unlocked from other sectors, such as telecoms.
Smart data has the potential to help create solutions to real life issues that consumers face on a daily basis as well as supporting small firms across the country and helping to grow the economy.
Smart data is already helping consumers via Open Banking and I am excited to see what other game changing technology this Challenge launching today will produce from our nations’ innovators and entrepreneurs, particularly in the energy, SME finance and home buying sectors.
