Prizes for innovation

Rogerson, W.P. (1987), Profit regulation of defense contractors and prizes for innovation , Journal of Political Economy, 97, pp. 1284—395. 

The expected private benefit depends on a number of market characteristics and public policies, including market size, intellectual property rights, price regulation, and the magnitude of prizes for innovation. Some public policies, such as the Orphan Drug Act, may affect both the costs and the expected private benefits of R D investment. 

Lichtenberg (1988) showed that by establishing prizes for innovation, the government indeed stimulates considerable private R D investment. During the period 1979-1984, which spanned a major defense buildup, slightly over half of the total induced increase in private R D was induced by the increase in government procurement by design and technical competition. 

Rogerson, W. P. 1989. Profit Regulation of Defense Contractors and Prizes for Innovation. Journal of Political Economy 97(6) 1284-1305. 

From 1967 until 1970, he worked at the RCA Lahoratories in Princeton where he was a member of an inter-diseiplinary group of physicists, chemists, and engineers studying the electro-optical properties of liquid crystals. From 1970 to 1973, he was at Hoffmann-La Roche in Basel, where he invented, together with Martin Schadt, a novel liquid crystal display. For this invention, he received the Hewlett-Packard Europhysics Award in 1976. Since 1973, W. Helfrich has worked and taught at the Freie Universitat Berlin. His scientific achievements were also honored with the Hennessy Prize for innovation ( science pour Tart ) in 1993. 

Andreas Leuteritz studied chemistry at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Numbei and received his diploma in 1995 in organic chemistry. He received his PhD from Dresden University ofTechnology in 2000 in industrial chemistry. Since 2000 he has been working at Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research Dresden with focus on polymer nanocomposites of layered minerals for which he received in 2008 the prize for innovation from the Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research. 

Arrhenius, insofar as his profession could be defined at all, began as a physicist. He worked with a physics professor in Stockholm and presented a thesis on the electrical conductivities of aqueous solutions of salts. A recent biography (Crawford 1996) presents in detail the humiliating treatment of Arrhenius by his sceptical examiners in 1884, which nearly put an end to his scientific career he was not adjudged fit for a university career. He was not the last innovator to have trouble with examiners. Yet, a bare 19 years later, in 1903, he received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. It shows the unusual attitude of this founder of physical chemistry that he was distinctly surprised not to receive the Physics Prize, because he thought of himself as a physicist. 

The level of basic reactions is a rather high level of innovation. There have been some chemists awarded the Nobel prize for discovering new basic reactions (e.g., Wittig, Diels, Alder, Friedel, Crafts etc.). 

The Nobel prizes awarded in the field of physical chemistry, kinetics, and catalysis (Table 1.4) reflect the ongoing scientific progress in these fields. Nobel prizes for heterogeneous catalytic reactions have been awarded in the early part of this century. Many current major catalytic processes still owe their origin to that period. In the middle of this century, organometallic systems and inorganic coordination complexes formed the basis of catalytic innovations. In the last two decades, the application of zeolites has been the basis of several new processes. 

Novel scientific ideas in organic synthesis require unique mechanisms to transfer them into industrially important irmovations. A detailed review on the past scientific advances reported under catalytic organic chemistry from the world-renowned academic research groups had indicated that highly successful industrial applications occurred whenever the opportunities presented by the industry formed the main themes of study. It is equally interesting to note that when Nobel Prize for chemistry was awarded in 2000 for the electrically conducting polymers, organic electronics found its place on the innovation radars of several companies in the concerned area (s). 

In 2000, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to Alan J. Heeger, Alan G. MacEHarmid, and Hideki Shirakawa "for their discovery and development of conducting polymers" (as written on their Nobel Prize diploma). This prize not only appreciated the scientific work of the Nobel Laureates and the imiversal importance of their research a new class of chemical com-poimds, not broadly known by the public before, came into the limelight. Since then, the conductive polymers have won growing attention in the scientific world, and the public now has more benefits from innovations due to the increasing technical usage of conductive polymers. 

Proponents also point to the fact that thirty-one scientists associated with the laboratories have won Nobel prizes, and that the laboratories have received more R D 100 awards (award given annually to technology innovations that hold a strong prospect for commercial success) than any other institution. 

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