This website describes the ongoing project "How do prizes induce innovation? Learning from aerospace prize competitions," which studies innovation inducement prizes.
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This project is investigating technology prizes and the means by which they induce innovation. Specifically, the project examines three prize competitions in the aerospace technology sector: (1) the Ansari X-Prize (which offered a reward for "the first non-government organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks") (2) the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge (which was aimed at "building and flying a rocket-powered vehicle that simulates the flight of a vehicle on the Moon"), and (3) the ongoing $30 million Google Lunar X-Prize (GLXP), which requires participants to land a robot on the surface of the Moon, among other secondary goals, by December 2012.
This project is studying three main aspects of those prizes: (1) how prize entrants respond to prize incentives, (2) how they organize R&D activities, and (3) how technology advancement takes place in the context of prize competitions. This project does not look at engineering aspects of technology developments or competitive positions of the prize entrants.
Neither this research project nor any of its researchers is affiliated with any GLXP team.
The project combines a two-stage research design and multiple data sources.
The first stage of the project tests a model of innovation inducement prizes based on patterns that link prize incentives with entrant characteristics, R&D organization, and technological outcomes. This model is tested and revised by studying the two aerospace prizes that have already been completed: the Ansari X-Prize and the Lunar Lander Challenge of NASA. This first stage is primarily based on secondary data and experts' opinion.
The second stage of the project applies the revised model to the ongoing Google Lunar X-Prize and prize entrants. Beyond the scientific and technical relevance of the challenge posed by the GLXP, this ongoing prize has exceptional significance for this research due to its real-time data access and possibility to explore real-time perceptions of prize entrants in a competitive context characterized by technological uncertainty. This project pursues this opportunity for data gathering using an approach that combines questionnaires, interviews, and direct observation.
Policy-makers and scholars are increasingly looking at innovation inducement prizes as a means to pursue scientific, technological, and broader societal goals. In the US, NASA, DoD, and other agencies have already used prizes to advance technologies related to their missions. Moreover, in the current economic crisis, prizes have received additional attention since they put forward potential advantages to stimulate the economy through innovation. Yet, little academic research has addressed this topic to understand the potential of prizes to achieve these goals.
This project will contribute to enhancing the understanding of the relationship between prize incentives, R&D organization, and technology advancement to inform the design of more efficient policies and public and private prize sponsorships aimed at increasing competitiveness, creating new businesses and jobs, or advancing critical technologies.
This work is supported in part by the US National Science Foundation under Grant Number SBE-0965103. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this website are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Luciano Kay is a Ph.D. candidate in Public Policy at the School of Public Policy of the Georgia Institute of Technology. This project is Kay's doctoral dissertation project. The Chair of the Committee that supervises this project is Professor Philip Shapira (Georgia Institute of Technology and Manchester University, UK).
For more information please contact Luciano Kay by e-mail using luciano.kay at gatech.edu
Last update: 2010-03-24 by Luciano