Name the target
The prize defines a concrete finish line: a route flown, a measurement hit, a test passed, or a capability demonstrated.
Explainer and running list
Challenge prizes
A challenge prize is a way to buy a breakthrough without knowing who will create it. Instead of hiring one team and managing the process, the sponsor defines the outcome and lets anyone race toward it.
ex ante
Offered in advance to solve a specific, well-defined problem that has not been solved yet. The reward is paid only upon successful completion.
ex post
Traditional awards like the Nobel Prize, Oscars, or Fields Medal mostly recognize achievements after they have already happened.
How they work
The prize creates a market for attempts.
Pay for completion
Teams spend their own time and capital. The sponsor pays only when someone meets the rules.
Create public pull
A good challenge turns an unsolved problem into a race that attracts builders, funders, press, and strange outsiders.
When to use them
Challenge prizes are for market failures.
They are not universally needed. They work best when society wants a breakthrough, but normal markets do not create enough private incentive to pursue it.
No prize needed
When the market is already the prize
Smartphones, computers, cars, and consumer electronics usually do not need a challenge prize. Customers want them, companies can sell them, and competition already rewards improvement.
- Customers already want the product and are willing to pay for it.
- Companies can capture value through sales, pricing power, patents, trade secrets, or brand.
- Competition pushes steady improvement: smaller, faster, better, cheaper.
- The risk is easier to underwrite because the market and revenue model are already visible.
Prize territory
When society benefits but the market underpays
Prizes are useful when benefits are diffuse, risks are high, or the first customer is unclear. The prize creates a temporary target that can pull effort into the field.
- The funder pays only if the goal is met.
- The organizer does not need to choose the winning method in advance.
- Outsiders, amateurs, and cross-disciplinary teams can compete.
- Publicity and prestige can coordinate attention around a neglected problem.
High public benefit, weak private capture
The benefits spread widely, so no one company can easily monetize the full value.
Longitude Prize: safer navigation benefited shipping and society broadly.High risk or no proven market
The technical and financial uncertainty is too large for normal private investment.
Ansari XPRIZE: early private spaceflight had huge upfront costs and no proven market.Stagnant field or too few active players
A prize can attract outsiders when incumbents have little reason to disrupt themselves.
Grand challenges in neglected disease, clean tech, or hard engineering problems.Clear goal, unknown path
The organizer defines success without dictating the method, leaving room for diverse approaches.
Historical prizes worked best when the target was measurable and the solution path was open.Potential to leverage outside investment
A prize can signal seriousness and mobilize far more capital than the purse itself.
The $10M Ansari XPRIZE helped draw more than $100M in team investment.A follow-on market can take over
The prize can catalyze the first breakthrough, then customers, contracts, or investors sustain it.
Many modern prizes aim to create this bridge from demonstration to adoption.Usually a weak fit
- Strong existing markets with clear profit potential, like smartphones or consumer electronics.
- Basic research where the goal is too vague to verify.
- Fields where normal competition already rewards steady improvement.
- Problems that cannot be judged clearly or fairly.
Bottom line: markets are excellent at delivering what customers are already willing to buy. Challenge prizes are better for jump-starting hard problems that markets under-incentivize because of risk, uncertainty, or diffuse benefits. They complement markets, patents, grants, and contracts; they do not replace them.
Running list
Prizes and the problems they pointed at
A growing reference list of incentive prizes that were announced before the solution existed, with payment tied to a defined outcome.
Longitude Prize
Determine longitude accurately at sea.
John Harrison built marine chronometers accurate enough to transform navigation, shipping, and global trade.
Harrison received major staged payments rather than one clean lump-sum award.
- Offered
- 1714
- Claimed
- 1773
- Prize
- GBP 20,000
Alkali Prize
Find an inexpensive process for producing sodium carbonate from common salt.
Nicolas Leblanc developed the Leblanc process, helping make large-scale soda ash production possible.
Political upheaval meant Leblanc did not receive the reward in his lifetime; it was later paid to his heirs.
- Offered
- 1775
- Claimed
- Posthumously
- Prize
- 2,400 livres
Napoleon's Food Preservation Prize
Preserve food for troops on long military campaigns.
Nicolas Appert developed airtight heat preservation in glass jars, laying the foundation for modern canning.
- Offered
- 1795
- Claimed
- 1809-1810
- Prize
- 12,000 French francs
Turbine Prize
Design a large-scale, commercially viable hydraulic turbine.
Benoit Fourneyron built a successful turbine that spread through Europe and North America and helped point toward large-scale hydroelectric power.
- Offered
- 1823
- Claimed
- 1827
- Prize
- 6,000 francs
Rainhill Trials
Test locomotives and engines for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway under practical operating conditions.
George and Robert Stephenson's Rocket proved the most efficient locomotive and helped establish the future of railway engineering.
- Offered
- 1829
- Claimed
- 1829
- Prize
- GBP 550
Substitute for Guano Prize
Find a readily available English substitute for Peruvian guano with comparable fertilizing properties.
No suitable alternative was submitted, making it a useful example of a well-defined challenge prize that failed to produce a winner.
- Offered
- 1852
- Claimed
- Unawarded
- Prize
- GBP 1,000
Billiard Ball / Ivory Substitute Prize
Create a practical substitute for ivory billiard balls.
John Wesley Hyatt developed celluloid, the first commercially successful synthetic plastic.
The prize was not formally awarded, but the challenge helped spark the work.
- Offered
- 1863
- Claimed
- Breakthrough around 1865-1868
- Prize
- $10,000
Schneider Cup
Advance civil aviation through international seaplane racing focused on speed and technical performance.
The competition pushed aircraft speed and capability forward, with Britain eventually winning the cup permanently.
- Offered
- 1913
- Claimed
- 1931
- Prize
- GBP 1,000
Orteig Prize
Make the first nonstop flight between New York and Paris.
Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic in the Spirit of St. Louis, helping pull aviation into the public imagination.
- Offered
- 1919
- Claimed
- 1927
- Prize
- $25,000
Kremer Prizes
Prove controlled human-powered flight over defined courses.
Paul MacCready's team won with Gossamer Condor, proving controlled human-powered flight was possible.
- Offered
- 1959
- Claimed
- 1977
- Prize
- GBP 50,000 for the primary figure-eight prize
Ansari XPRIZE
Build a privately funded reusable crewed spacecraft that could reach 100 km twice within two weeks.
SpaceShipOne won the prize and helped catalyze the modern commercial space industry.
- Offered
- 1996
- Claimed
- 2004
- Prize
- $10 million
DARPA Grand Challenges
Build autonomous vehicles that could complete difficult desert and urban courses.
The competitions helped accelerate self-driving vehicle teams, techniques, and talent pipelines.
- Offered
- 2004
- Claimed
- 2005-2007
- Prize
- $1M-$2M per challenge
Boom Prize
Build the first American amateur-built RC airplane to break the sound barrier.
A modern challenge prize aimed at making a hard technical target legible and exciting.
Open prize page- Offered
- 2026
- Claimed
- Unclaimed
- Prize
- $750K cash plus $50K in stock
Additional resources
Where to find more challenge prizes
Historical examples are scattered. Modern challenge prizes are easier to find because governments, foundations, and platforms now publish them directly.
Historical lists
Best starting points for the classic Longitude, Orteig, canning, aviation, and early industrial prizes.
Nesta: A guide to historical challenge prizes
Curated guide to ten past challenges, including the British Longitude Prize, French Food Preservation Prize, Billiard Ball Prize, Rainhill Trials, and Orteig Prize.
Challenge Works / Nesta challenge prize guides
Challenge Works publishes practical material on designing and running challenge prizes, including guide-style resources and toolkits.
Wikipedia: Inducement prize contest
A quick reference page with famous inducement prize examples and links to related lists.
Broader compilations
More systematic attempts to count prizes, compare prize design, or analyze the field.
Rethink Priorities spreadsheet
A detailed 2022 spreadsheet of large inducement prizes from the 20th century onward, focused on prizes of at least $100K.
Lever for Change prize research
A 2022 study of more than 580 prizes and competitions from the past 50 years, useful for scale and trend context.
XPRIZE competitions
XPRIZE maintains its own competition archive, including active, completed, and high-profile global prizes.
Modern and active prize portals
Places to look for current or recent challenge competitions.
USA.gov federal prize competitions
Challenge.gov was sunset in 2026; its public-facing challenge listings now point to USA.gov resources.
GSA prize and challenge resources
Guidance for federal challenge managers, including toolkits, requirements, and communities of practice.
HeroX
Crowdsourcing platform with public challenges across NASA, energy, health, education, water, environment, and other categories.
XPRIZE
Large global challenge prizes, often focused on climate, health, space, biodiversity, learning, and frontier technology.
Other useful sources
Research streams and organizations that are useful when going deeper.
Academic work on inducement prizes
Look for research by Zorina Khan, Heidi Williams, the National Academies, and innovation policy scholars.
Consulting and philanthropy reports
McKinsey and philanthropic prize-design reports are useful for sponsor strategy, prize architecture, and scaling patterns.
Impact Canada and government challenge portals
Other governments publish innovation challenges and prize competitions, often around climate, health, and public services.