Toward Increasing the Impact of Grand Innovation Prizes: Lessons from the Emergence of an Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Ecosystem

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Innovation prizes have become an important tool for federal agencies to improve the impact of public investments in research and development. For example, the recent emergence of autonomous vehicles (AVs) are attributed to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grand challenge competitions (2004-2007). However, there is little understanding of why and how innovation prizes function to improve technology, education, and commercial outcomes associated with research and development. This project thus seeks to understand the specific elements responsible for innovation prize impact. Understanding how and why technological, educational, and commercial impact occurred will not only contribute to the prize model literature, it will also generate insights important to the establishment and effective management of innovation prizes, improving the social and commercial impact of future innovation prize competitions. To fulfill the project goals, the research team will implement an embedded, multiple case study design, an approach well-suited for investigating complex, interconnected phenomena over time, at different levels of analysis. The study team will conduct case studies through focused interviews individuals from universities, government agencies, companies, and other organizations involved in AV development that participated in the DARPA grand challenge competitions. The study will also include case studies of similar organizations involved in AV development that did not participate in the grand challenges. These case studies will generate both primary and rival theoretical explanations of AV development and impact and, through comparison among cases, illuminate how and why innovation prize impact occurred. In the addition to publication, project findings will be disseminated in a workshop focused on the utility of grand challenge models for improving STEM education and entrepreneurship outcomes among minorities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.