supercomputing). NSF should consult widely with professional, technical, and amateur societies, industry associations, entrepreneurs, early-stage investors, industry research organizations, and others in identifying appropriate prize topics and reaching out to potential participants beyond NSF’s traditional academic constituency. Communicating in advance with the potential range of applicants can help determine how to motivate participation. On a case-by-case basis there may be important benefits to NSF in contracting with one or more external organizations to assist in the design and conduct of a prize contest. These assets could include deep knowledge of a technical domain and its community of researchers, ability to raise funds to supplement prize awards, and expertise in marketing and branding.

To maximize the learning opportunity represented by the prize program, NSF should engage one or more external evaluation teams to track the program’s development and near-term impacts from its earliest stages. In the early years it would be clearly premature to attempt to determine whether NSF had accomplished the prize program goal of producing significant innovations for the nation. Instead, a formative evaluation strategy would focus on

• whether the program is attracting large numbers of contestants more diverse than NSF’s largely academic constituency,

• whether private funds are forthcoming to support contestants and from what sources and for what reasons,

• what spin-off activities result from contests,

• whether public awareness of innovation or the goal of a particular prize is enhanced,

• and whether NSF’s public image is affected by its sponsorship of prize contests.

In addition to these short-term impacts, early evaluation should also focus on determining what features of the contests seem to contribute to their success or lack of success. NSF should consider conducting a post-prize marketing review to determine what proportion of potential participants was reached and what communications techniques were most effective.

For each prize contest NSF and ultimately its director should decide the topic and type of contest, the rules of participation and competition, and the winner.

The committee distinguishes between forms and rules that would

Front Matter (R1-R12)

Summary (1-8)

1 Prizes in the National Innovation System (9-17)

2 An Experimental Innovation Inducement Prize Program at NSF (18-39)

3 Selecting Prize Topics and Implementing Early Prize Contests (40-48)

Appendix A Comparison of Recent Prize Competitions (49-52)

Appendix B Committee and Staff Biographies (53-60)