The million dollar prize for scientific innovation

Although the prize for science creation is up to a million dollars, it is still profitable .

Not long ago, in a repaired warehouse in San Francisco, a group of people were secretly gathering.Among the attendees are the world's leading experts in many fields, from astrophysics, nanotechnology, to health and energy.

In addition, there are famous entrepreneurs like Larry Page, co-founder of Google;Ratan Tata, president of Tata India Group.All are members of the X Prize Foundation - a charitable organization that aims to reward cash innovations.

The purpose of the meeting is to offer cash prizes for new innovations.On July 29, 2010, a new competition was announced: a prize of $ 1.4 million for the initiative to clean up the oil spill in the sea faster.

Stimulate creativity

The first award was given to the Ansari X Prize: $ 10 million for the first private group to build the shuttle and fly 100km above the ground, and fly twice within two weeks.In 2004, this award went to Burt Rutan, a famous space engineer and Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft.

Ansari X Prize: $ 10 million for the first private group built by the shuttle (Photo: X Prize)

Since then, the X Prize Foundation has set a number of other awards, such as a $ 10 million Progressive Automotive X Prize for a clean car with 100 miles per gallon consumption (100 km not yet completed). liters of fuel).Peter Diamandis, an entrepreneur in the organization's executive group, said he was confident that when stimulated by awards and fame, talent will create innovations that can change the world.

The huge X Prize Foundation awards inspire other charities, including Bill Gates' Gates Foundation, including governments, to organize their own initiatives, or through InnoCentive, an online intermediary company.As a result, the total amount of bonuses has skyrocketed.

In fact, rewarding innovations is not new.In 1714, the British government organized the Longitudinal Prize to award navigators the most accurate longitude determination.In 1795, Napoleon set a prize for his military's best food preservation initiative, so that today we have canned food.

Gradually, the awards for the initiatives were sparse, instead, people focused on awarding the innovations brought into the application, sometimes after a very long time.Therefore, after receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948, TS Eliot lamented ' receiving a prize like a cemetery ticket' .

Must recognize that creative awards have promoted innovations.Liam Brunt, of the Norwegian University of Economics, conducted research on British agricultural innovations in the 19th century. He found that the awards contributed to an increase in the number of license of invention.

From 1839 to 1939, the Royal Agricultural Society awarded nearly 2,000 awards, worth a million pounds worth.Not only new winners are granted or renewed patents, but even non-winners also get over 13,000 patents for their innovations.

Today's awards often have such stimulating effects.For example, the Ansari X Prize has attracted more than $ 100 million in private sector space investment.The award-winning spacecraft technology is currently being used by Virgin Galactic to develop space travel, and many unsuccessful people set up companies to operate in the new space. this.

Even if it is a billion dollar prize, it is still profitable!

According to Dr. Diamandis, a prize if well organized will encourage people to make changes.Karrim Lakhani, of Harvard Business School, one of the people who carried out research on the solutions introduced on the InnoCentive website, said the author of successful solutions are often not scientific or active people. dynamic in related fields.

In addition, awards also help people work together.Netflix, an American movie rental company, hangs a $ 1 million prize for anyone who offers better algorithms than their experts for predicting movie ratings online.Surprisingly, the number of participants in the competition was 55,000 from 186 countries.The group of 7 winners, though having worked on the internet for a long time, only met each other for the first time in 2009 on the day of the award.

These successes have stimulated governments to organize awards.Britain, Canada, Italy, Russia, and Norway are partnering with Gates Foundation to sponsor the Advanced Market Commitment (AMC) award.This award is given to those who have developed vaccines to prevent diseases that are of little interest in developing countries.AMC currently hangs a $ 1.5 billion prize for pharmaceutical companies that offer cheap vaccines to prevent many pneumococcal deaths that are causing a lot of deaths in children.Next year, GlaxoSmithKline will provide this vaccine to Africa.

Scientific innovation if brought into commercialization will bring great profit.In the photo : Laboratory research (Photo: X Prize)