Client: Department for International Development
Lead Researcher and author – Bryony Everett
Time: 2011-2012
Following on from a short literature review an independent review of the evidence base underlying innovation prizes was commissioned. The aim was to analyze innovation prizes’ (also known as inducement prizes) potential effectiveness and value for money as a tool to encourage innovation in environmental technologies for development.
The research considered 15 different case studies looking at challenges posted to achieve different aims along the innovation chain from early stage ideas and business cases, to invention and finally commercialisation and uptake. The report was well received and widely distributed and can be accessed here.
The report was followed up with presentations to senior officials in the World Bank and United Nations in New York, and to the Chief Scientific Advisors in DFID, and a further think piece on the subject entitled “Using Innovation Prizes to help Achieve the Millennium Development Goals” was published in the MIT Innovations Journal (Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization Winter 2012, Vol. 7, No. 1: 107–114).
