This paper describes how design (thinking), digital and data informed the development of the university-led Global Design Challenge for Sport and Physical Activity (GDC). Chambers & Sammon (2022) contend that it is the confluence of these three fluencies that drive innovation.

Now in its third year, the GDC is an innovation engine which uses design thinking (Brown, 2008) to crowdsource ideas for incubation and impact that will innovate sport and physical activity – It is a seven-phase process from ‘Launch to Impact’. The GDC is set in the policy context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) specifically those called out in the Kazan Action Plan (KAP, 2017). For GDC 2021, UNESCO became the patron and the competition was funded by Sport Ireland. In all, there were 30+ partner organisations (non-governmental organisations, businesses and  universities). The GDC 2021 also worked closely with a university based incubator.

There were two aspects to this research (a) a desk study and (b) a thematic analysis of GDC team entry origins and their solutions. The desk study focused on surfacing the most relevant challenges facing sport and physical activity during the pandemic. It specifically examined published research on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on physical activity and sport in Ireland and globally and examined national and international policy surrounding this topic. A concept centric matrix (Webster & Watson, 2002) was used to identify key hypotheses which informed the design challenge and sub-challenges being set for teams. The thematic analysis gathered data on team location, design focus and type of innovation.

There were two key clusters of findings emanating from (a) the desk study and (b) a thematic analysis of GDC team entry origins and their solutions. A concept centric matrix (Webster & Watson, 2002) employed during the desk study identified the main design challenge for the GDC 2021 competition as being ‘How Might We design innovative ways of increasing participation in sport and physical activity in an inclusive, sustainable and fun way!’. The desk study further identified eight sub-challenges – these being inclusion, community, fans and volunteers, policy-based, sustainability, youth-based, technology-based, lifestyle physical activity. Teams chose one of these to solve during the competition phase in June. From the analysis of team entries to the Devpost platform, we had 256 registrants from 53 countries, with 56 teams from 23 countries submitting their solutions (https://gdc2021.devpost.com/). Following the judging phase, there were 25 shortlisted teams from 16 countries. Fourteen of these were digital solutions and eleven were analogue initiatives. All of these teams were mentored and ten teams received development grants. Some of these teams were invited to formally enter a university incubation programme to develop into a business. These are being funded by Sport Ireland. As we prepare for GDC 2022, we can say that the GDC has had several key impacts: (i) Reach; (ii) Networking Opportunities; (iii) Education of Participants; (iv) Kazan Action Plan SDG Impact Tool; (v) Incubation Opportunities; (vi) Volunteerism: c.20, 000 volunteer hours (GDC 2020 and GDC2021); and finally the (vii) Range and Volume of ideas.

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