The craft of incentive prize design: Executive summary

“The craft of incentive prize design” offers practical lessons in prize design for public sector leaders and their counterparts in the philanthropic and private sectors.

Executive summary

In the last five years, incentive prizes have transformed from an exotic open innovation tool to a proven innovation strategy for the public, private, and philanthropic sectors. Incentive prizes seem deceptively simple: Identify a problem, create and publicize a prize-based challenge for solving that problem, sign up diverse participants, and offer a reward to the winner. In practice, designing prizes that target the right problem, attract the most capable participants, and capture the imagination of the public to successfully achieve a desired outcome involves a complex set of design choices. This report aims to help prize designers organize and master those choices.

In the past, designers thought of prize types as distinct tools, often seeking to match the right tool to the problem they were seeking to address. Now, prize design has become a craft. Experienced designers help their organizations achieve a range of outcomes by building highly customized prizes and deploying them in concert with other problem solving and public engagement strategies. They focus less on what type of prize to use and more on how to assemble the fundamental elements of prize design through a series of integrated design choices informed by research and analysis. While this approach is understandably more complex than simply pulling a prize out of a toolbox, it also enables more sophisticated prize designs, allowing organizations to more effectively get what they need.

The craft of incentive prize design offers practical lessons for public sector leaders and their counterparts in the philanthropic and private sectors. It helps them to understand:

What types of outcomes incentive prizes help to achieve
What design elements prize designers use to create these challenges
How to make smart design choices when launching an incentive prize to achieve a particular outcome

This report treats prize design not as a linear, step-by-step process, but rather as an iterative activity that requires making integrated choices to solve a carefully defined problem and then generating outputs that achieve a larger set of outcomes. By synthesizing insights from recent literature, expert interviews, and analysis of over 400 prizes, we identify six outcomes that designers commonly seek (individually or in combination), falling along two dimensions:

Developing ideas, technologies, products, or services

Attract new ideas
Build prototypes and launch pilots
Stimulate markets

Engaging people, organizations, and communities

Raise awareness
Mobilize action
Inspire transformation

The first dimension captures the range of conceptual and tangible things which designers are trying to develop. The second reflects how prizes can incent individuals, groups, organizations, and institutions to get involved in solving important public sector problems. In most cases, incentive prizes aim for outcomes on both dimensions. Looking at prizes through the lens of outcomes allows designers to establish a stronger link between what their organizations are trying to do and the benefits that prizes can help generate.

We use the phrase “elements of prize design” to describe and organize the strategic choices that designers should consider when crafting incentive prizes. There are five core design elements: resources, evaluation, motivators, structure, and communications. The heart of this report features practical decision-oriented frameworks for designers, helping them understand how they can tailor prize design elements to facilitate different outcomes and increase the effectiveness of their challenges.

Through decision-oriented frameworks that link outcomes to design elements, The craft of incentive prize design enables public, philanthropic, and private sector leaders to build better prizes. The report helps these leaders benefit from the recent experiences of designers who are advancing the art of incentive prize design in the service of the public good. By accessing these experiences, illustrated with recent examples of successful prizes, designers can more effectively harness the ingenuity of the public to address their most vexing challenges.

Read the full report on The craft of incentive prize design.

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Credits

Acknowledgements

Together with New Venture Fund, including Bruce Boyd, Ginger Elsea, Renee Eyma, and Hilary McConnaughey, Doblin wishes to thank the six funders of this report: James Anderson from Bloomberg Philanthropies, Sarah Koch from the Case Foundation, Gretchen Crosby Sims from the Joyce Foundation, Jonathan Sotsky from the Knight Foundation, Ariel Simon from the Kresge Foundation, and Kippy Joseph from the Rockefeller Foundation. Without their vision, generosity, commitment, and expertise, we would not have been able to offer prize designers the insights and perspective contained in this report. We are grateful for the opportunity to advance the art and science of prize design for the sake of the public good.

We want to thank the individuals whose interviews informed our research, including Beverly Blake and John Bracken of the Knight Foundation, Erich Broksas of the Case Foundation, John Clarke of Bloomberg Philanthropies, Jason Crusan of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Alok Das of the Air Force Research Laboratory, Jeff Davis of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Kathryn Dennis of the Community Foundation of Central Georgia, Greg Downing of the Department of Health and Human Services, Jonathan Greenblatt of the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, Joseph Heaps of the Department of Justice, Steve Hodas of Innovate NYC Schools, Tom Kalil of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Maurice Kent of the United States Agency for International Development, Elizabeth Kittrie of the Department of Health and Human Services, Kevin Kuhn of the Environmental Protection Agency, Karim Lakhani of Harvard Business School, Bob Lee of the Wright Brothers Institute, Xavier Le-Mounier of the European Commission, Katie Leonberger of Bloomberg Philanthropies, Tammi Marcoullier of the General Services Administration, Nancy Merritt of the Department of Justice, Bill Moses of the Kresge Foundation, Clare Newman of Bloomberg Philanthropies, Anil Rathi of Skild, Euan Robertson of New York City Department of Small Business Services, Brian Sasscer of the Case Foundation, Denice Shaw of the Environmental Protection Agency, Michael Smith of the Social Innovation Fund, a White House initiative and program of the Corporation of National and Community Services, Michael Timmons of Skild, Katheryn Viguerie of the United States Agency for International Development, Adam Wong of the Office of the National Coordinator, Department of Health and Human Services, Julia Wood of the Community Foundation of Central Georgia, Josh Wyner of the Aspen Institute, Emily Yu of the Case Foundation, and Marco Zappalorto of Nesta. Several friends, supporters, and colleagues provided invaluable feedback at many phases of our research, including Cristin Dorgelo of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Jenn Gustetic of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Nancy MacPherson of the Rockefeller Foundation, Patricia Rogers of BetterEvaluation, Robert Picciotto of King’s College (London), Geoff Tuff and Ruth Schmidt of Doblin, Bill Eggers of Deloitte Public Sector Research, and Jitinder Kholi, Max Hoblitzell, Ken Decreus, and Lev Joffe of Deloitte Consulting LLP.

Lastly, we would like to thank our Deloitte research and graphics team: Claudia Antonacci, James Jeffrey, Emily Koteff Moreano, and Loren Weingarten.

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