Today the National Academies of Science recommended that the National Science Foundation create an “inducement prize” program to reward scholars for finding novel solutions to scientific or technical problems. The report suggests starting small, say $200K to $2M, and work up to prizes of $3M to $30M (!). Some of the language is quite unusual for this type of report, such as “first-past-the-post” and “best-in-class” innovation inducement prize contests (sounds like a Robert Altman project, RIP).
