by John Brooker | Apr 27, 2012 | Innovate
YES! AND… Collaborate. Innovate. Transform – Creative Gorilla #107 How might you use prizes to inspire innovation in companies? “Proactive prizes are phenomenally powerful tools. They circumvent bureaucracy, investment anxiety and, where necessary, ideology. They exploit the human will to take part, compete and win.” Bryan Appleyard, Journalist: “The mother of invention: cash” UK Sunday Times News Review, 13 December 2009. How might your organisation use prizes for innovation? In 1714, the British government offered a £20,000 Longitude Prize, for “a simple and practical method to determine a ship’s longitude”. The eventual winner, John Harrison, started work in 1730 and eventually received his prize (or part of it) in 1773! Despite Harrison’s experience, journalist Bryan Appleyard writes that prizes for innovation are still popular. (Please see the source in the quotation above. Unfortunately, the article is not available on the “TimesOnline” website). In his article, Appleyard cites (among others): The Ansari X $10million prize for the development of a private sector spacecraft (now put in to production for Virgin Galactic) The DARPA $40,000 prize for finding ten red weather balloons across the USA, an experiment to test the power of networks for gathering accurate information The Mprize, an unknown amount to develop a longer living mouse Agencies use these prizes to promote innovation in a cost effective way. As the promoters of the Mprize state on their site, “The Mprize springs from a simple truth: The greatest innovations in human history have always been fueled by three things … competition, imagination, and the entrepreneurial spirit.” So prizes work, however, the prize that interested me most was a $1 million prize offered by Netflix, a DVD distribution web site. Its prize was awarded...
