The French government offered a hefty cash award of 12,000 francs to any inventor who could devise a cheap and effective method of preserving large amounts of food.
Several famous aviators made unsuccessful attempts at the New York–Paris flight before relatively unknown American Charles Lindbergh won the prize in 1927 in his aircraft Spirit of St. Louis.
Their work in social innovations revolves around 4 key pillars; Climate Response, Global health, Resilient Society and Technology Frontiers.
It fosters high-profile competitions that motivate individuals, companies and organizations across all disciplines to develop innovative ideas and technologies that help solve the grand challenges that restrict humanity's progress.
Nesta Challenges, based in London, is an example of this running prizes for innovations that for example reduce social isolation or make renewable energy generators accessible to off the grid refugees and returnees.
[citation needed] Inducement prizes have a long history as a policy tool for promoting innovation and solving various technical and societal challenges.
These prizes offer a compensation reward, which can be in the form of monetary or non-monetary benefits, and aim to engage diverse groups of actors to develop solutions with low barriers to entry.