Need a Breakthrough? Offer Prize Money!
Summary
For the federal government, which has awarded $220 million in incentive prizes in hundreds of competitions since 2010, it offers a way to set an ambitious goal without having to predict which team or approach is most likely to succeed. Advances in digital manufacturing, such as 3-D printers, laser cutters, gene-editing kits and inexpensive computer circuits such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi, make it easier for amateur inventors to get into the act. “We have access to the tools to make almost anything,” said Katie Rast, director of Fab Lab San Diego, a thriving nonprofit digital fabrication and design center. In 2012, General Electric launched a $500,000 prize competition through Kaggle, an online innovation platform that can call on the expertise of about 600,000 freelance data scientists. Three hundred contestants from 56 countries, she said, “generated close to 700 new product designs.” First prize went to a young engineer in Indonesia named Arie Kurniawan who slashed the part’s weight to less than a pound, offering the potential for millions of dollars in fuel savings.