Disrupting Science with Incentivized Innovation

Abstract

Relatively recent competitions, prizes, and challenges have seen a resurgence in use. They are a driving innovation in a wide array of scientific and engineering arenas. However, not all techniques and opportunities are being taken advantage of. There are many models of competitions that have been studied and used in numerous engineering design challenges. Because of this, we can identify opportunities to also use these models to advance scientific achievements. Competitions are very common in posing engineering design challenges. However, there are relatively few pure science competitions being created outside of the recognition prizes such as the Nobel Prize. We argue that there are models of incentivized innovation that can be used to dramatically advance new scientific discoveries and that in the next decade, we will see a large and rapid increase in the use of incentivized innovation for scientific advancement.