Seeking the Wisdom of Crowds Through Challenge‐Based Competitions in Biomedical Research

“Challenge‐based competitions” refers to a framework for addressing fundamental research questions in which the community is presented with a challenge, the data to address the challenge, and independent, unbiased assessment to rank submitted solutions. Although the typical result of such efforts is a robust performance evaluation of diverse methodologies, challenge‐based competitions reach far beyond algorithm assessment. Here, we discuss the impact of challenge‐based competitions in the areas of organizing and building communities and driving innovation.