Why innovation prizes fail? Because past performance isn't indicative of future results.
You may want to incentivize discoveries by financing proven talent, but that approach ignores the fact that being successfull has an important component of luck.
There's a recent economic model [1] studying the effects of sheer luck in acquiring wealth; and it shows that the richest people end up being those who accumulate a streak of lucky breaks, independently of their talent (above a minimum).
The model predicts that the best strategy for getting talented people to deliver results is giving a small amount of funding to everyone equally. This way, you maximize the chances that someone will start a project with the right approach, AND that are least some of them will have the lucky breaks required for it to flourish.
You may want to incentivize discoveries by financing proven talent, but that approach ignores the fact that being successfull has an important component of luck.
There's a recent economic model [1] studying the effects of sheer luck in acquiring wealth; and it shows that the richest people end up being those who accumulate a streak of lucky breaks, independently of their talent (above a minimum).
The model predicts that the best strategy for getting talented people to deliver results is giving a small amount of funding to everyone equally. This way, you maximize the chances that someone will start a project with the right approach, AND that are least some of them will have the lucky breaks required for it to flourish.
[1] https://www.inc.com/chris-matyszczyk/so-youre-smart-but-your...