Innovation prizes have a good track record so far, and do seem to act as a lever in a real sense.
There is a troublesome user experience in any crowd funded innovation prize though - most prizes will take a long time to pay out, or will never pay out at all. For the first several years your user experience will be, "Well, I've committed 100 dollars to 3 projects, but nothing has happened yet." Kickstarter projects can take years but at least they clearly march towards a ship date.
Any endeavor here will need to have a mix of big and small projects, and will also need to find ways to show feel-good incremental progress from the more ambitious prize pools.
There is a troublesome user experience in any crowd funded innovation prize though - most prizes will take a long time to pay out, or will never pay out at all. For the first several years your user experience will be, "Well, I've committed 100 dollars to 3 projects, but nothing has happened yet." Kickstarter projects can take years but at least they clearly march towards a ship date.
Any endeavor here will need to have a mix of big and small projects, and will also need to find ways to show feel-good incremental progress from the more ambitious prize pools.