Innovation Inducement Prizes at the National Science Foundation (2007) / Chapter Skim
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1 Prizes in the National Innovation System
1 Prizes in the National Innovation System
Pages 9-17
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From page 9... ...
One of the key tenets of the national innovation system concept is that effective innovation policy almost always involves multiple complementary mechanisms.
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From page 10... ...
has sponsored a series of prizes awarded to teams that develop programmed land vehicles that can complete a challenging overland course without further human intervention.3 NASA has recently contracted with several nonprofit organizations to assist it in offering inducement prizes for several relatively small-scale improvements in aerospace technologies through its Centennial Challenges program.4 Private interests have been somewhat more active than governments in offering inducement prizes for innovations in various fields. Commercial aviation has featured privately sponsored prizes for many decades.
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From page 11... ...
2. For a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of inducement prize contests in the context of climate change, see Newell, Richard G., and Nathan E
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Thus, we believe it is important to have these potential effects in mind as NSF proceeds to implement its prize program: • Prize programs can focus the attention of policy makers, entrepreneurs, and the attentive public as well as researchers on the goals11 of an innovation program. They may be less well suited than grants and 11Throughout this report we use a variety of similar or related terms to characterize what innovation inducement prizes are about or are intended to accomplish.
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From page 13... ...
• Prize programs, compared with grant and contract programs, can attract more interest from the general public, conceivably encouraging support of and participation in the science and engineering enterprise. • Prize programs can create incentives for nongovernmental organizations and individuals to invest financial resources in support of the activities of prize contestants, and these investments may exceed the value of the prize purse to be awarded to the winner.
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From page 14... ...
A program to explore the potential utility of such prizes at NSF offers an unprecedented opportunity to try various approaches to such prizes, to gather systematic data on the prize process and its outcomes, and to learn more about where prizes have the greatest payoff and about where they may work best as substitutes for or complements to grant programs. NSF ENGAGEMENT IN INNOVATION INDUCEMENT PRIZES In the FY 2006 appropriation for NSF the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Science, State, Justice, and Commerce sent a strong message to the NSF that it should establish an innovation inducement prize program.
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From page 15... ...
The Committee also expects NSF to encourage private sector involvement in the effort to create a prize program.13 The brief provision of law, agreed to by the Senate and signed by the President, allowing NSF to spend appropriated funds on innovation inducement prizes, along with the guidance in the House Appropriations Subcommittee report on how to use the funds, poses a substantial challenge to NSF. From its establishment in 1950 NSF has been seen and has seen itself as an agency that works principally through the competitive award of grants to academic scientists and engineers for self-initiated proposals about how to advance basic understanding of natural and social phenomena.
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From page 16... ...
We encourage NSF to adopt this broader notion of innovation. NSF faces a further challenge in setting up an innovation inducement prize program to focus on problems of national importance because it has not generally been viewed as having a charter to support innovations intended to address societal needs.
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It is with this perspective in mind that the committee offers in the remainder of this report a set of observations and recommendations on the establishment and operation of an NSF innovation inducement prize program that, at least at the outset, will be experimental.
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