White House touts ‘challenge’ prizes
Contests spark ‘positive effects’
Protecting astronauts. Halting fleeing cars. Squeezing a few more miles out of a gallon of gas. Everyone enjoys a good challenge.
And if the government dangles prize money in front of inventors to come up with technology solutions to common problems, it can get results just as in the private sector, suggests a White House report out today that documents its successes in offering “challenge” prizes.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) report follows passage last year of the America COMPETES Act, which streamlined federal research funding rules and gave agencies wider latitude to solve problems by offering competitive prizes. Prizes such as 2004’s Ansari X Prize, where philanthropists awarded $10 million to the first private spacecraft to reach 62 miles high twice in two weeks, helped inspire the move.
“Prizes are an old idea whose time has come again,” says OSTP policy director Tom Kalil, pointing to the English government awarding a prize in 1714 for the synchronized clocks that allowed ships to determine their longitude. “We believe we are seeing a growing number of successes,” Kalil says, such as NASA partnering with Google on a $1.65 million prize won last November by an electric plane that delivered the equivalent of 403.5 miles-per-gallon.
In particular, the report notes that NASA, the Defense Department and the Energy Department have taken leads in a number of successful prizes prior to the law’s signing last year.
A retired engineer from New Hampshire, for example, collected $30,000 for providing NASA with 85% accurate forecasts of solar outbursts dangerous to astronauts.
Another retired engineer, from Lima, Peru, won $25,000 for providing the Air Force Research Laboratory with plans for “a remote-controlled, electric-powered vehicle” that could safely halt uncooperative drivers, such as fleeing car thieves or possible car bombers, by inflating an airbag under their car.
“Yes, there have been some positive effects of recent prizes, but that may not be enough to say they were ‘successful’ programs,” says innovation expert Luciano Kay of Georgia Tech. Prize successes have to be weighed against the costs of the competitions, and few measures exist to tell whether a regular government contract might have been a cheaper way to solve a problem, Kay says.