I don’t see any reason why prizes can’t encourage discoveries or are limited to leveraging existing technology. What’s the likelihood that the winner of any of Newt’s prizes listed above will not have created any new, innovative technologies along the way?

Granted, prizes probably don’t encourage discoveries to the same extent as grants, but that’s not to say they don’t encourage discovery at all. Prizes have the effect of focussing research. If the NIH distributed 100% of its research budget in prizes, then all research would be aimed at the prizes.

Unfortunately, the system we’re in today is 100% in the other direction. We need some balance–a combination of grants and prizes. Grants to support basic, exploratory research and prizes to encourage technological leaps and to focus research on solutions to problems of global health.