Carrot works with large and small organizations. We charge on a fixed-fee basis with multiple tiers of services and with optional packages of features.

Unlike other firms, we do not charge as a percentage of your award(s) nor do we price our services against the capacity of your budget. As a certified vendor to US federal and other highly regulated clients, we are required to maintain consistency in our pricing.

Every client has a different set of needs. At Carrot we will design your competition, brand it, build it, and run it for you. Our approach ensures that each program is customized for your intended outcome. This means that our clients often meet with us on a weekly or bi-weekly basis during the initial stages of program design, and then on a less regular basis during each active competition phase. We have clients that have dedicated as few as 2-3 staff and others that have empaneled multiple stakeholder parties and key partners. We will work with you to assume as much of the responsibility as you need or want.

Any time you need others to compete for your resources or attention, competitions are more efficient and effective than other approaches.

Solving problems requires investment. Once you are ready to find the right team or technology to meet your needs, sourcing those opportunities is always a challenge. By sponsoring a competition, you are merely replacing traditional models, like RFPs or other procurement methods, with a more open, transparent, and fair platform. By expanding the aperture, you will find new and exciting solutions.

From the start of any client engagement to launch, it takes between 3-5 months to design and develop your competition. During that process, we will recommend specific phases of submission and assessment, to ensure that you are attracting top performers and that their proposals are scored as precisely as possible. Depending upon the number and type of each phase, the actual competition may take between 6-12 months. We can work with you to determine what length works best for your program.

You own the assets. This is an important aspect of our services. As individuals, organizations, and/or teams register to compete, that data is yours. Similarly, we will work with you to establish ownership of any intellectual property submitted through your competition. Our ambition is to provide you with the concepts and the assessment data, so that you can select the best solution(s) to meet you needs, but we also see value in the full range of proposals. You get to pick the winning solution(s), but you also gain a more complete understanding of the many other technical approaches that may change your perspective or shift your strategic approach to implementation.

Over the past two decades, the use of prizes, challenge competitions, and fellowship programs has grown at a pace of ~18% per year. Today, corporations, foundations, and government agencies are replacing RFPs and other forms of procurement with prizes. So, it is not unusual for us to work with clients who have started a program only to find that the structural and operational challenges are too great or that scaling it requires expertise. At Carrot, we help our clients realize the potential that inspired them in the first place. We are your guide to improving any program that invites others to compete for your resources.