Introduction

The university-led Global Design Challenge for Sport and Physical Activity (GDC) was founded by author in April 2020 and is now entering its fourth year. It enjoys UNESCO patronage. The GDC is a global, online innovation challenge, designed initially in response to the pandemic's impact on sport and physical activity. The challenge set is fully informed by a desk study, which surfaced the most relevant challenges facing sport and physical activity (O’Neill et al, 2021).  The GDC crowdsources ideas which hack this challenge, using design thinking for incubation and impact.

The GDC vision is a world where everyone has the right to enjoy the health and wellbeing benefits of being physically active across their lifespan. The GDC mission is to support the creation and development of new innovative ideas from around the world that enable people of all ages and abilities to lead active healthy lives. In particular, the GDC strives to promote and support the Kazan Action Plan 2017 which calls out seven United Nations Sustainable Development Goals which pertain to physical education, physical activity and sport. The GDC goals are: 

Goal 1: To support innovation in sport and physical activity; 

Goal 2: To support the achievement of the sustainable development goals through life-long engagement in sport and physical activity;  

Goal 3: To promote evidence-based solutions and sustainable behavioral change in respect of engagement in sport and physical activity;

Goal 4: To establish a global competition and platform for new ideas in sport and physical activity to emerge; 

Goal 5: To support the progression, piloting, and scaling of new ideas in sport and physical activity that can be tailored to local contexts;

Goal 6: To bring individuals and organisations together globally to create sustainable engagement in physical activity throughout life;

Goal 7: To close the gap between policy and grassroots in sport and physical activity;

Goal 8: To promote and teach design thinking as a means of addressing complex global problems. 

The underpinning theoretical framework for the GDC leans on the following three interconnected pillars: A Human-Centred Approach to Innovation (Brown, 2008); The paradigm of design thinking (Laursen & Tollestrup, 2018); and The Social Innovation Ecosystem Model (Audretsch, Eichler & Schwarz 2022, p.234 adapted from Isenberg, 2011).

The GDC impact study uses a mixed methodology i.e., both quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis. As an evaluation tool, it utilises an indicator-based approach called the Theory of Change Logic Model (TOCLM) (Weiss, 1995) to check the impact of the GDC in relation to its eight goals. The TOCLM unpacks these impacts at a meta level under the following categories: cultural, economic, educational, environmental, health, political, social and technological, and within time horizons (short, medium, long-term). The declared impacts are underpinned by specific metrics i.e., (a) Engagement and Attribution, and (b) Reach and Significance. In addition, the annual submissions to the GDC online platform are harvested as living case studies to showcase the ideas being submitted by teams and the journey of those who enter the incubator(s).

The findings show the attainment of all eight GDC goals. Here are findings pertaining to two of these goals: GDC Goal 4: To establish a global competition and platform for new ideas in sport and physical activity to emerge. This shows strong evidence of Engagement and Attributions and Reach and Significance: (i) GDC 2020 (https://global-design-challenge.devpost.com/): 187 participants from 40 countries, 38 projects from 25 countries. (ii) GDC 2021 (https://gdc2021.devpost.com/): 256 participants from 53 countries, 58 team submissions from 16 countries, 10 projects furthered through funding and support. (iii) GDC 2022 (https://gdc2022.devpost.com/): 136 participants from 25 countries, 36 team submissions from 14 countries. GDC Goal 5: To support the progression, piloting, and scaling of new ideas in sport and physical activity that can be tailored to local contexts. We can see movement of GDC ideas to incubation i.e., the GDC judging panel has identified ideas worthy of investment and incubation. Since July 2020, over 20 GDC team ideas have entered the incubator programme. From these, five are being tested and scaled intensively in a university incubator, one in an international accelerator, and two within our international partner organisations. Finally, in terms of the relevance of the GDC story to this conference, it is clear that the GDC imbues diversity at every level - (i) The GDC fosters the design thinking mindset in teams which relies on diversity of thought and disposition; (ii) The GDC Management Team is diverse being comprised of academics, leaders of non-governmental organisations and business-leaders and incubator leaders; and (iii) the makeup of competing GDC teams themselves, which cut across gender, time-zone, expertise, sector, etc. These three characteristics of the GDC show how it embodies the theme of ECER 2023 i.e., the value of diversity in education and educational research.

Audretsch, D.B., Eichler, G.M. & Schwarz, E.J. (2022). Emerging needs ofsocial innovators andsocial innovation ecosystems 1International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal (2022) 18: 217-254 Isenberg, D. (2011). The entrepreneurship ecosystem strategy as a new paradigm for economic policy: Principles for cultivating entrepreneurship.Presentation at the Institute of International and European Affairs,1(781), 1-13. Laursen, LN & Tollestrup, C. 2017. Design Thinking - A Paradigm. DS 87-2 Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED 17) Vol 2: Design Processes, Design Organisation and Management, Vancouver, Canada, 21-25.08. 2017 Weiss, C. (1995). Nothing as Practical as Good Theory: Exploring Theory-Based Evaluation for Comprehensive Community Initiatives for Children and Families in Connell, J, Kubisch, A, Schorr, L, and Weiss, C. (Eds.) ‘New Approaches to Evaluating Community Initiatives’. Washington, DC: Aspen Institute.