Science Policy Research Report: The Use of Innovation Prizes in Government

奖品和重大挑战-奖励第一个完成某项壮举或发明一项新技术的人或团队的比赛-可以发挥重要作用，并通过创新帮助国家处理和解决复杂问题，以实现更具竞争力、增进国民健康和保障国防等重要目标。鉴于人们对这些竞赛的兴趣与日俱增及其显著影响，有必要系统地汇编关于如何设计、管理和评估这些资助机制的科学知识。该项目分析现有的经验证据，编写一份研究报告，综合有关奖项的研究结果，并提供可行的建议，以帮助政府机构更有效地利用奖项并完成其使命。奖项代表着创新和创造力的非传统实例，代表着一种激励创新、教育和培训S与电信学生以及提高对更广泛政策问题的认识的方式。这个项目有助于更好地理解政府奖项的价值和潜力，但它的建议也适用于解决其他紧迫的社会或经济问题，这些问题不一定与技术有关。该项目评估过去15年的科学证据和其他非学术文献，然后回顾和综合现有知识，以澄清关于奖项在科学和技术政策中的使用情况，哪些是已知的，哪些是未知的。它试图回答一些问题，比如某些设计参数如何影响他们的结果，每笔奖励美元所产生的实际激励效果，以及奖项对赞助商的使命做出的贡献。它的综合利用了研究的结果，并侧重于四个主要主题：设计、实施、成果的使用和奖项的评估。它分析和比较了所评论的出版物的方法质量，并调查了不同研究之间存在差异的原因。

Prizes and grand challenges - competitions that offer a reward to the first person or team that achieves a certain feat or invents a new technology - can play an important role and, through innovation, help the nation tackle and solve complex problems to achieve important goals such as becoming more competitive, advancing the national health, and securing the national defense. Given the growing interest in these competitions and their notable effect, there is a need to systematically compile scientific knowledge on how to design, manage, and evaluate these funding mechanisms. This project analyzes existing empirical evidence, produces a research report with a synthesis of research findings on prizes, and provides actionable recommendations to help government agencies make a more efficient use of prizes and achieve their missions. Prizes represent unconventional instances of innovation and creativity and represent a way to incentivize innovation, educate and train students in S&T, and increase awareness of broader policy issues. This project helps better understand the value and potential of government prizes but its recommendations also have application to solve other pressing societal or economic problems that are not necessarily technology-related.This project evaluates scientific evidence and other non-academic literature of the past 15 years, and then reviews and synthesizes existing knowledge to clarify what is and what is not known about prizes with regards to their use in science and technology policy. It seeks to answer questions such as how certain design parameters affect their outcome, the actual incentive effect induced per award dollar, and the kind of contributions prizes make to the sponsor's mission. Its synthesis taps into research's findings and focuses on four main themes: design, implementation, use of results and evaluation of prizes. It analyzes and compares the methodological quality of the reviewed publications and investigates the reasons for differences across studies.