That suggests that if we want to encourage more good ideas, we can concentrate minds by offering prizes for problem solving. Remember how the Longitude Prize inspired Harrison to create his remarkable clocks? There’s recently been fresh interest in this idea: for example, the DARPA Grand Challenge, which began in 2004, helped kick-start progress in self-driving cars; on the 300th anniversary of the original Longitude Prize, the UK’s innovation foundation Nesta launched a new Longitude Prize for progress in testing microbial resistance to antibiotics; and perhaps the biggest initiative is the
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