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Why do people enter competitions? Because people like to compete. Why do competitions have prizes? Because people like to win.

The British parliament recognized those concepts in 1714, when it initiated a contest with a 20,000-pound prize to the inventor who developed a reliable method of determining longitude -- a measurement that would help ships stay on course.

In recent years, the most famous competitions have been funded by the private sector, most notably by the X Prize Foundation. Its $10 million contest for a private spacecraft produced a winner in 2004, and it is now running $10 million contests for rapid human genome sequencing and super-fuel-efficient cars, plus a $30 million contest for a privately funded robotic lunar lander. Those awards, like the longitude money, are inducements, which encourage new innovations, rather than recognition, like the Oscars, which reward previous accomplishments.

Government agencies have been reticent to use such contests to achieve their goals. Grants and contracts are the most common ways that agencies attract third parties to do work for them, although both are often highly specific in the expected outcomes and the means by which those outcomes are to be achieved. Through grants and contracts, agencies can ensure that third parties comply with the host of laws and rules that govern the expenditure of taxpayer dollars.

Prize competitions tend to be less restrictive on the means by which participants can achieve the desired goals. That's a strike against their use by agencies. The government's budgeting process also gets in the way, as does the likelihood of politicization through Congress or by executive branch political appointees.

Thomas Kalil, a fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, studied the potential of prize competitions when he served on the Clinton administration's National Economic Council in the late 1990s. He has proposed that agencies experiment with the use of prizes for several reasons. One is to tap into atypical sources, such as private inventors and entrepreneurs, who may have surprising ideas for how to achieve goals that would not surface through traditional government grants, contracts or in-house development. Another is to engage the public in innovation through competition, the way American Idol has engaged the public through musical competition. Another reason is that the government would only expend taxpayer dollars if someone actually accomplished the prize's goals. Inventors would be likely to leverage private sector dollars in the pursuit of the government's prize offering.

That's what happened when the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency over the past few years held a competition for unmanned ground vehicles capable of maneuvering through urban battlefields. The ultimate winner of the 2007 competition, a team from Carnegie Mellon University and General Motors, lined up a host of corporate sponsors to fund the development of its vehicle. Following on that competition, the Pentagon is sponsoring a $1 million prize for the developer of lightweight batteries that soldiers could wear in combat to power the equipment they lug around.

Similarly, NASA is sponsoring a slate of prizes for a variety of innovations by getting private companies to offer monetary awards. Last year, a $200,000 prize went to Peter Homer, an unemployed engineer from Maine who designed new astronaut gloves.

Members of Congress have proposed a variety of additional prizes to spur innovation, but none have been taken up yet by agencies. The longitude prize offers a cautionary tale if the government catches the prizes bug. In that case, the prize became heavily politicized, and the inventor of the primary technology for determining longitude, John Harrison, had to fight long and hard to get his due reward. He never got the full 20,000 pounds.

COMMENTS

• All government agencies should use innovative means to spur creative ideas and out-of-the-box thinking. Using current processes within the bureaucracy along with those who want to retain their fiefdoms just won't get us there! tsstrick Posted March 25, 2008 8:30 AM
• In response to Skepticus, I hadn't seen Kelman's column. My column followed on reporting I did for a February 23 brief in National Journal, which I'll reproduce here: Eyes on the Prize Attention basement tinkerers! Congress is trying to set up competitions with big payouts to encourage innovation. Think you can build a hydrogen vehicle or design a long-lasting lightbulb? Congress has asked the Energy Department to offer multimillion-dollar prizes to inventors who can. Got an idea for accessible voting machines, cheap medicines, or gadgets to suck greenhouse gases out of the air? Various lawmakers want prize competitions set up for those technologies, too. Under authority granted by Congress last year, the Pentagon is offering $1 million for lightweight, wearable batteries. The inspiration for the prizes comes, in part, from the privately funded X Prize Foundation's space travel and super-efficient-car competitions. Thomas Kalil, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said that lawmakers have been slow to offer prizes, but the result can be awesome inventions from unexpected sources. "The government only pays if someone is successful," he said. --Brian Friel Brian Friel Posted March 20, 2008 2:58 PM
• This column is very similar to one posted by Steve Kelman on Federal Computer Week recently -- "Keeping an Eye on the Prize," March 3rd, 2008. Coincidence, or plagiarism? skepticus Posted March 20, 2008 1:30 PM