In his latest Ice Update, Eric Mankin of Babson points out that incentives to spur innovation – such as the X Prize – are not new. In fact, they’ve been around for long time. One of Mankins readers – Parker Neal – points out :

In 1919, a gentleman named Raymond Orteig offered a prize of $25,000 to the first person who could fly an airplane non-stop between New York and Paris. The Wright Brothers had left the earth 16 years earlier, but flight hadn’t grown rapidly … Orteig thought it was time for that to change.

Hubert Julian, Rene Fonck, Charles Nungesser, Francois Coli and others tried and failed. Nine teams in total spent around $400,000 to try and win a prize that was 1/16th of that amount (hardly cost effective). But Lindbergh succeeded. He promptly became a national hero. Air flight took off.

Mankin also mentions that other innovation approaches have long precedents. Thomas Edison blazed the path for effective innovation environments when he established the innovation factory in Menlo Park. Edisons approach was team based and used rapid iterations of prototypes.

Sound familiar? Hello Ideo. Hello What If….

Note : Eric Mankins updates are usually email only. Some of the older ones can be found here.