Prizes CP and Military Innovation Bad - GDI 2024

***Prizes CP***
1NC Prizes CP
The United States federal government should offer significant cash prizes for innovation in the areas of artificial intelligence and medical technology.
Prizes solve innovation – top incentive and contest-format accelerates progress in the Aff advantage areas
Luciano Kay ‘20, October 1, Research Associate at the Institute for Social, Behavioral and Economic Research, University of California, Santa Barbara, “Want to solve society’s most urgent problems? Cash prizes can spur breakthroughs,” THE CONVERSATION, accessed July 2, 2024, https://theconversation.com/want-to-solve-societys-most-urgent-problems-cash-prizes-can-spur-breakthroughs-146458
Innovation is a critical part of tackling problems in areas as diverse as transportation, housing, public health and energy. But the scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs who might generate creative solutions often investigate issues or pursue economic opportunities in other less urgent fields. Incentives for science and innovation try to steer efforts toward the most pressing societal problems.
Prizes – cash rewards for scientific, engineering and other achievements – are one form of incentive that has been around for a very long time. In the 18th century, for example, organizations such as the Royal Society in the U.K. awarded medals to scientists for their breakthrough research.
Today, in addition to this type of scientific award, there are also prizes for solutions to diverse problems, including the invention of new transportation means for disabled people, the engineering of new battery recycling methods, and even the development of technologies to treat COVID-19 patients. A new Earthshot Prize, which Prince William recently announced, will award 50 prizes worth 1 million pounds each over the next 10 years. It’s one example of a monetary prize used as incentive to develop solutions to pressing global environmental problems. There are also “open innovation” websites, such as InnoCentive, that companies use to source ideas and inventions from thousands of problem solvers in exchange for prizes.
All these prizes seek to focus creativity and investment by attracting the smartest and most creative people who, with the right incentive, might focus on the highlighted problem and in turn come up with amazing breakthroughs. Researchers like me work to determine how effective these prizes really are as drivers of innovation.
Reward past achievements, motivate future breakthroughs
There are two main types of prizes. Scientific awards, which include both historic medal awards and the more recent Nobel Prizes, for example, are a retrospective recognition for outstanding contributions to science rather than an incentive to embark on one specific line of inquiry. To award them, every year, a number of judges examine the achievements of the nominees and pick winners.
Grand prizes, in contrast, offer rewards to the first participant who achieves a particular feat that is of interest to the prize organizer. For example, in the 1990s, the Ansari X Prize offered US$10 million for the first private manned spacecraft that went to space twice within two weeks. Participants had to meet these specific criteria to be able to claim the prize, which ultimately sought to promote space tourism. Generally, this type of prize names a single winner who takes home all the prize money. But sometimes there are smaller second and third prizes too.
Thanks to the Ansari X Prize and other popular competitions like the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize for Moon exploration and the $5 million DARPA Grand Challenges for the development of autonomous vehicles (all case studies that I investigated), companies, governments and nonprofit organizations began using prizes more actively and, with help from the internet, made them more popular and exciting.
Analyzing prizes’ effects on innovation
When I started researching how competitions work as incentives back in the mid-2000s, there was little empirical evidence, even though prizes have been around for a very long time. Since then, research has helped untangle the way prizes work and their potential to encourage science and innovation.
Studies have found, for example, that the motivations to compete for prizes are as diverse as the people and teams that participate. Bigger cash prizes help attract media attention and more participants, but also draw innovators with the possibility of finding a new job, the chance to learn about science and technology, or simply the opportunity to participate in a project that could help change the world.
Prizes compete with other more prevalent incentives for the innovators’ attention and efforts in today’s globally connected and fast-paced world. Prestige, for example, is a very important motivation in science, and lucrative markets drive innovation within companies.
The evidence also shows that new grand prizes attract new investments and may also raise awareness of important problems and influence the direction of ongoing research. Engaging notable figures, leaders and partners, as the Earthshot Prize does, helps to promote the mission of the prize and attract even more interest. Participants who have no scientific or engineering experience might still contribute novel ideas and solutions in prizes that have fewer eligibility requirements and attract more diverse contributors.
Note that since prizes pay only for results – the winning solution – participants need to be resourceful and actively seek support from friends, family and investors.
So, well-designed prizes can stimulate more creativity and innovation, but whether they achieve certain goals ultimately depends on who participates and the broader economic conditions when prize competitions are held. The Google Lunar X Prize, for example, was a fairly open competition and attracted diverse participants, including some who probably didn’t have the skills and experience to complete a lunar mission. The financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath made fundraising even more difficult for them.
2NC Counterplan overview
The Aff is built around the idea of “incentives” for innovation – that is the only reason patents solve. The counterplan offers an incentive in the form of a prize. The counterplan solves all or almost all of the case – make the Aff prove the difference in innovation links to an impact. We only need to win a decent risk of the DA to outweigh the difference in solvency.
2NC Prizes solvency – generic
Prizes help creators raise money – best path to big break-throughs
Peter H. Diamandis, 2009, MD, Chairman/CEO, X PRIZE Foundation, “Using Incentive Prizes to Drive Creativity, Innovation and Breakthroughs,” X PRIZE FOUNDATION, accessed June 30, 2024, https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/esd-172j-x-prize-workshop-grand-challenges-in-energy-fall-2009/9d674da4079b92e65b7a0b2c0186dbe9_MITESD_172JF09_Diamandis.pdf
One of the most difficult ingredients for creativity and innovation is access to capital. Frequently the leading thinker or innovator of the group is forced to spend 80% of their time raising capital to cover salaries and access to resources rather than thinking and/or leading. Worse yet, those ideas which have the highest probability of producing true breakthroughs are the most novel and therefore the most difficult to prove and therefore fund.
Incentive prizes provide an environment which attracts a new “flavor” of money that has different objectives. Again the Ansari X PRIZE offers an excellent example. Before announcing the $10M purse, any team wishing to fund a private sub-orbital spaceship would need to approach an angel investor or venture fund for capital. Any sophisticated investor would immediately say “no” given the inherent risks, specifically: no proven market, regulatory risks (the laws to allow private human spaceflight did not exist), technology risk and risk of very visible public failure. As such, few investment funds flowed towards this technology development arena, and those who did invest lost significant amounts. It was space community expressed this thought with the following joke: “what is the best way to become a millionaire in the space business? Start as a billionaire!”
After the Ansari X PRIZE was announced, teams found it much easier to raise the capital and support. Rather than seek investment funds, these same teams were able to viably pursue to alternative sources of capital: sponsorship and private benefactor money.
Sponsorship funding which typically is in the $20 billion - $30 billion per year in the U.S. is looking for highly visible, unique opportunities. As the sporting work continues to be cluttered, incentive prizes offer a unique alternative. As Sergey Brin, co-Founder and President of Google said in a video address at the announcement of the Google Lunar X PRIZE, “I knew we never wanted to do something so conventional at Google, I thought if we were ever to sponsor something it should be something ambitious. Having seen the success of the Ansari X PRIZE, the fact of having many different entrepreneurs all competing to accomplish a goal is first more exciting, second more likely to actually achieve the goal and third probably less expensive overall.”
Private Benefactor money, which is sometimes called “ego money” is the same pot of funds that an individual uses to put their name on the side of a building, or to personally fund an America’s Cup team. It is money that gives them personal gratification or helps build a family legacy. A large audacious prize can help wealthy individuals transition from “Success to Significance. These levels of funding can run in the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars. The properly constructed prize can entice and attract funds to back a team. As Paul Allen, the vision backer of SpaceShipOne said at the Ansari X PRIZE post-flight press conference in October 2004, “A few years ago I was just browsing the internet and I came across this thing on the X PRIZE and I thought this is kind of interesting, who are the crazy guys trying to do this kind of thing...”
Prizes solve any advantage***
James Love, Knowledge Ecology International, and Tim Hubbard, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, 2009 Summer, “Prizes for Innovation of New Medicines and Vaccines,” ANNALS OF HEALTH LAW, Volume 18, Issue 2 Summer 2009, Article 3, accessed July 2, 2024, https://lawecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1111&context=annals
The use of prizes to reward innovation has long been of interest to economists and others, as evidenced by a plethora of recent proposals to use prizes to stimulate research into areas as diverse as the environment, energy, climate control, mining, space travel, software, and airport security. 31 More recently, however, there has been a growing interest in using prizes to simulate R&D in the areas of medicinal technologies.3 2
2NC Prizes solvency – military tech
Prizes spur military tech breakthroughs
Tonya Y White, PhD, NC, USAF, and Scott F Walter, PhD, PE, BSC, USAF, (Ret.) ’24, “Use of Prize Competitions to Develop Advanced Military Medical Capabilities,” Military Medicine, Volume 189, accessed July 2, 2024, Issue 5-6, May/June 2024, Pages 962–965, https://academic.oup.com/milmed/article/189/5-6/962/7422192
For military-required or desired capabilities with a potential commercial market or application, there are alternative pathways to fund and develop them, which leverage outside investments and introduce new ideas and approaches that reduce time, costs, and risks of failure. One such pathway is using prize competitions that announce a government-related problem, requirement, or desire for new and novel capabilities, products, or scientific advancements with a commitment to a funding award for successful achievements.1 These announcements are made to industry, academia, and others to entice them to raise or invest capital and ideas that may result in solutions and enable them to win the (cash) prize for achievement and other tangible benefits stemming from their success.
Unlike grants and contracts, a prize competition awards funding based on achieving successful outcomes versus the potential for success. Instead of utilizing assigned project funding to issue a grant or contract, a project or program manager, researcher, principal investigator, or similar can instead initiate a prize competition. The language in a prize competition conveys the criteria and specifications required for winning the challenge and being awarded the prize funding. The criteria and specifications should also accurately describe and define the problem and communicate the criteria for a successful solution. Establishing a prize competition motivates competing teams to develop innovative and novel solutions that address the issue or requirement specified in the challenge to win the (cash) prize.
A prize competition is intended to mature the state of the science by requiring a demonstration of development and refinement along with applying the solution to field new capabilities. Establishing a prize competition incentivizes outside investments and reduces costs and risks by developing commercially viable medical products or capabilities that meet military requirements and specifications while creating an affordable commercial product. The benefits of using this developmental pathway are straightforward—the government only funds teams or organizations that achieved a successful outcome (i.e., only pay for acceptable results) while transferring significant risks and costs to the teams that will compete in the challenge.
The prize competition and availability of prize funding entices the formation of teams that raise the capital required to compete and meet the stated objectives of the challenge, reportedly driving cumulative competitor investments totaling 10-40 times the prize purse.2 This leveraging of non-government funding also reduces governmental R&D costs while enabling more capability development. The use of prize competitions also opens the possibility of applying novel ideas and strategies to achieve the stated objectives, as the selection is based on performance outcomes, agnostic to the processes, ideas, and approaches used to achieve solutions.
The U.S. government authorizes prize competitions under 15 U.S. Code § 3719 and Public Laws 110-69 and 111-358 (America COMPETES [Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science] Act) for all federal agencies, and 10 U.S. Code § 4025 for the Department of Defense for advanced technology achievements.3,4 Awards up to $50 M are authorized to stimulate innovative technology breakthroughs in areas that support the government. The Department of Defense has underutilized the prize competition pathway as evidenced by sponsoring ten or fewer competitions and challenges per year between fiscal years 14-20, while the number of prize competitions and challenges conducted by other federal agencies grew from 97 in FY 14 to 140 in FY 20, a 45% increase.1
General Services Administration established the Challenge.Gov program to support all federal agencies using prize competitions and crowdsourcing campaigns to advance their missions.5 They provide a central hub platform for managing prize competitions, including prize competition announcements, information and guidance, inquiries, collection of submissions, selections, and awards. The participating federal agencies provide human resources to manage the effort via a team of subject-matter experts and administrative support, which may include hiring support contractors to manage some or all of the effort.
The government agency sponsoring the prize competition can form teams of subject-matter experts from any government agency to develop acceptance criteria, provide feedback to competitors, and evaluate submitted solutions for acceptance and award. For example, when developing medical products, the government lead or manager of a prize competition may request the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to provide a subject matter expert to be part of the evaluation team.
The concept of prize competitions allows for the pooling of funding from various government, private, corporate, and other sources to increase the value of the purse prize. For establishing prize competitions that require competitors to develop a commercially available product as criteria for success, the government agency sponsoring the prize competition can use Advance Market Commitments to further incentivize investments for product development by agreeing to procure a set number of products that meet their established performance criteria. One example of where the Department of Defense could use prize competitions to develop new medical capabilities or products is a prize competition to develop and field an affordable, viable, universal, and lyophilized blood replacement product for use at the point of injury that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves for commercial and military applications. Using a prize competition process and advance market commitments incentivizes and stresses their fielding of a commercially available product that is likely more affordable, available, and universally used.
How to get started? The best place to start is to learn more about prize competitions at https://www.challenge.gov/. This informative website contains examples of current and ongoing prize competitions, outcomes of previous prize competitions, and information on utilizing General Services Administration’s Challenge.Gov program to address government problems, requirements, and desires for new and innovative capabilities or products. We recommend examining the Defense Acquisition University’s (DAU’s) contracting and agreements cone 6 (tool) that lists Federal Acquisition Regulation and non-Federal Acquisition Regulation grants, contracts, and agreements. Similarly, we recommend examining the Federal Acquisition Institute’s periodic table of acquisition alternatives7 that emulates Defense Acquisition University’s cone and includes Joint Venture Partnerships and Prize Competitions as possible pathways.
Armed with this new knowledge, approach project or program managers and Research, Development, and Acquisition leaders to inquire whether a prize competition could be used in lieu of a grant or a contract to develop a new capability or product. Next, share the knowledge you have obtained with others and teach them about seeking out and using alternate pathways that leverage commercial development pathways and non-government funding that improve performance outcomes of R&D efforts. In conclusion, with a focus on proven results, prize competitions empower and leverage untapped talent and funding from outside the government to develop and deliver unexpected solutions to tough government problems and challenges that advance the state of science and provide affordable capabilities and products for military and civilian use.
Prizes induce tech advance
Deborah D. Stine, Specialist in Science and Technology Policy, June 29, 2009. “Federally Funded Innovation Inducement Prizes,” CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE, accessed July 1, 2024, https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20Room/DARPA/15-F-0059_CRS_FOR_CONGRESS.FEDERALLY_FUNDED_INNOV_INDUCMNT_PRZS.pdf
Since at least the 18th century, philanthropic organizations, industry, governments, and nongovernmental organizations throughout the world have offered many different kinds of prizes with a variety of objectives to reward accomplishments in science and technology. In the United States, Congress authorize most of today's federally-funded innovation inducement prizes 1 beginning with the 108 h Congress (2003). This analysis focuses on federally-funded "innovation inducement prizes," which are sponsored by federal organizations and designed to encourage scientists and engineers to pursue scientific and technical societal goals not yet reached.
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