Mar 25,2013

Spurring Innovation in the Way We Urbanize

+ Kari Kohn

Jonathan Adler recently commented on the process of promoting innovation through contests for prizes. He writes:

Creating contests for prizes to encourage and direct innovative efforts is important. So too are the selection of contest aims and criteria. To maximize the value of such prizes, it’s important to identify the sorts of technological or other achievements that will redound to public benefit, and identify sound criteria for identifying the winner. This can be difficult, but no more difficult than trying to identify, in advance, those labs or research projects that are most likely to produce desired innovations. Prizes have been shown to drive innovation. Where innovation is necessary, policymakers (and others) should turn to prizes.

Adler’s post was spurred by Andy Kessler’s piece in the WSJ. Kessler suggests that the recently announced Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences misses an opportunity by rewarding breakthroughs that have already occurred rather than spurring on those that have not:

Real contests have to be about BHA—Big, Hairy, Audacious goals.If they really want to have an impact on society—beyond the societal wealth already created by Google and Facebook—offer a billion-dollar BrinZuck prize to prevent or stop Alzheimer’s, or to regenerate spinal cords and organs, or to cure obesity. Instead of small-ball academic researchers vying for grants from the National Institutes of Health, you’d get entrepreneurs coming out of the woodwork trying innovative approaches to win a $1 billion jackpot. Or maybe the challenge could be to create personal jet packs. Or neuron downloads. Whatever—but something BHA.

Kessler notes that there is historical precedence for BHA prizes:

In 1814, Englishman George Stephenson stuck a reciprocating steam engine onto a carriage with flanged wheels that ran up an inclined track and hauled coal out of the Killingworth colliery. In effect, railroads were born, but it took until 1826 for Parliament to authorize a 36-mile rail line between Manchester and Liverpool, the missing link connecting England’s industrial center and deep-water ports. Rather than give Stephenson the contract for a locomotive, the government authorized an 1829 contest with a £500 prize for the fastest and most dependable run.There were five entries. A locomotive named Sans Pereil belched out unburnt coal and cracked a cylinder. Perseverance couldn’t break the minimum 10 miles per hour. This left Novelty and Stephenson’s Rocket. (The fifth, Cycloped, powered by a horse running on a treadmill, was scratched when the horse fell through its platform.) By the end of the first day, Novelty’s bellows broke and its joints froze. On day two, Stephenson cranked up the steam pressure and his Rocket ran at a peak of 30 miles per hour. England had its rail line to replace horse-drawn carriages and, with it, an industrial lead over the rest of Europe by a couple of decades.

So, what are some areas that could benefit from contests with BHA goals? I’d nominate urbanization. Humans benefit when they cooperate, and cities allow for cooperation at the scale of millions. Urbanization is humanity’s most important project, and by 2100 the project will be largely complete. We will have settled in the cities that our descendants will live with for centuries. We have a window of opportunity in which to seize the tremendous opportunities that urbanization presents. A prize that spurs innovation in new and existing cities could benefit hundreds of millions of people—the very definition of BHA.