IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/ucsdec/qt8637337w.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Effects of Prize Structures on Innovative Performance

Author

Listed:
  • Zivin, Joshua Graff
  • Lyons, Elizabeth

Abstract

Successful innovation is essential for the survival and growth of organizations, but how best to incentivize innovation is poorly understood. We compare how two common incentive schemes affect innovative performance in a field experiment run in partnership with a large life sciences company. We find that a winner-takes-all compensation scheme generates significantly more novel innovation relative to a compensation scheme that offers the same total compensation but shares it across the ten best innovations. Moreover, the winner-takes-all scheme does not reduce innovative output on average and, among teams of innovators, generates more output than the less risky prize structure.

Suggested Citation

  • Zivin, Joshua Graff & Lyons, Elizabeth, 2021. "The Effects of Prize Structures on Innovative Performance," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt8637337w, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:ucsdec:qt8637337w
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/8637337w.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gustavo Manso, 2011. "Motivating Innovation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(5), pages 1823-1860, October.
    2. Miriam Bruhn & David McKenzie, 2009. "In Pursuit of Balance: Randomization in Practice in Development Field Experiments," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(4), pages 200-232, October.
    3. Benjamin F. Jones, 2009. "The Burden of Knowledge and the "Death of the Renaissance Man": Is Innovation Getting Harder?," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(1), pages 283-317.
    4. Benny Moldovanu & Aner Sela, 2008. "The Optimal Allocation of Prizes in Contests," Springer Books, in: Roger D. Congleton & Arye L. Hillman & Kai A. Konrad (ed.), 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1, pages 615-631, Springer.
    5. Catherine C. Eckel & Philip J. Grossman, 2002. "Sex Differences and Statistical Stereotyping in Attitudes Toward Financial Risk," Monash Economics Working Papers archive-03, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    6. James G. March, 1991. "Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 2(1), pages 71-87, February.
    7. Joshua Krieger & Danielle Li & Dimitris Papanikolaou, 2022. "Missing Novelty in Drug Development," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 35(2), pages 636-679.
    8. Cason, Timothy N. & Masters, William A. & Sheremeta, Roman M., 2010. "Entry into winner-take-all and proportional-prize contests: An experimental study," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(9-10), pages 604-611, October.
    9. Edwin Mansfield & John Rapoport & Anthony Romeo & Samuel Wagner & George Beardsley, 1977. "Social and Private Rates of Return from Industrial Innovations," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 91(2), pages 221-240.
    10. Clark, Derek J & Riis, Christian, 1998. "Competition over More Than One Prize," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(1), pages 276-289, March.
    11. Masclet, David & Colombier, Nathalie & Denant-Boemont, Laurent & Lohéac, Youenn, 2009. "Group and individual risk preferences: A lottery-choice experiment with self-employed and salaried workers," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(3), pages 470-484, June.
    12. Scott Shane, 2001. "Technological Opportunities and New Firm Creation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(2), pages 205-220, February.
    13. Wright, Brian Davern, 1983. "The Economics of Invention Incentives: Patents, Prizes, and Research Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(4), pages 691-707, September.
    14. Sunder, Jayanthi & Sunder, Shyam V. & Zhang, Jingjing, 2017. "Pilot CEOs and corporate innovation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(1), pages 209-224.
    15. Kevin J. Boudreau & Nicola Lacetera & Karim R. Lakhani, 2011. "Incentives and Problem Uncertainty in Innovation Contests: An Empirical Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(5), pages 843-863, May.
    16. Pierre Azoulay & Erica Fuchs & Anna P. Goldstein & Michael Kearney, 2019. "Funding Breakthrough Research: Promises and Challenges of the “ARPA Model”," Innovation Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(1), pages 69-96.
    17. Richard L. Fullerton & R. Preston McAfee, 1999. "Auctioning Entry into Tournaments," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(3), pages 573-605, June.
    18. Taylor, Curtis R, 1995. "Digging for Golden Carrots: An Analysis of Research Tournaments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(4), pages 872-890, September.
    19. Andrew Healy & Jennifer Pate, 2011. "Can Teams Help to Close the Gender Competition Gap?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(555), pages 1192-1204, September.
    20. Gary Charness & Matthias Sutter, 2012. "Groups Make Better Self-Interested Decisions," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(3), pages 157-176, Summer.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Richard Carson & Joshua S. Graff Zivin & Jordan Louviere & Sally Sadoff & Jeffrey G. Shrader Jr, 2020. "The Risk of Caution: Evidence from an R&D Experiment," NBER Working Papers 26847, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Richard T. Carson & Joshua Graff Zivin & Jordan J. Louviere & Sally Sadoff & Jeffrey G. Shrader, 2022. "The Risk of Caution: Evidence from an Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(12), pages 9042-9060, December.
    3. Erina Ytsma, 2022. "Effort and Selection Effects of Performance Pay in Knowledge Creation," CESifo Working Paper Series 10153, CESifo.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Brueggemann, Julia & Meub, Lukas, 2015. "Experimental evidence on the effects of innovation contests," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 251, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    2. Aner Sela, 2002. "Contest Architecture (jointly with Benny Moldovanu)," Theory workshop papers 357966000000000088, UCLA Department of Economics.
    3. Ming Hu & Lu Wang, 2021. "Joint vs. Separate Crowdsourcing Contests," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(5), pages 2711-2728, May.
    4. Lakshminarayana Nittala & Sanjiv Erat & Vish Krishnan, 2022. "Designing internal innovation contests," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(5), pages 1963-1976, May.
    5. Emmanuel Dechenaux & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2015. "A survey of experimental research on contests, all-pay auctions and tournaments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(4), pages 609-669, December.
    6. Pavel Kireyev, 2016. "Markets for Ideas: Prize Structure, Entry Limits, and the Design of Ideation Contests," Harvard Business School Working Papers 16-129, Harvard Business School.
    7. Marco Faravelli, 2011. "The Important Thing Is Not (Always) Winning but Taking Part: Funding Public Goods with Contests," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 13(1), pages 1-22, February.
    8. Reut Megidish & Aner Sela, 2013. "Allocation of Prizes in Contests with Participation Constraints," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(4), pages 713-727, December.
    9. Daniel P. Gross, 2020. "Creativity Under Fire: The Effects of Competition on Creative Production," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(3), pages 583-599, July.
    10. Minchuk, Yizhaq & Sela, Aner, 2023. "Subsidy and taxation in all-pay auctions under incomplete information," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 99-114.
    11. Newell, Richard G. & Wilson, Nathan E., 2005. "Technology Prizes for Climate Change Mitigation," Discussion Papers 10698, Resources for the Future.
    12. Onur Bayar & Thomas J. Chemmanur & Mark H. Liu, "undated". "How to Motivate Fundamental Innovation: Subsidies versus Prizes and the Role of Venture Capital," Working Papers 0175fin, College of Business, University of Texas at San Antonio, revised 06 Jan 2016.
    13. Laura J. Kornish & Jeremy Hutchison‐Krupat, 2017. "Research on Idea Generation and Selection: Implications for Management of Technology," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 26(4), pages 633-651, April.
    14. Bao, Zhengyang & Leibbrandt, Andreas, 2024. "Tournaments with safeguards: A blessing or a curse for women?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 221(C), pages 292-306.
    15. Benny Moldovanu & Aner Sela, 2008. "The Optimal Allocation of Prizes in Contests," Springer Books, in: Roger D. Congleton & Arye L. Hillman & Kai A. Konrad (ed.), 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1, pages 615-631, Springer.
    16. Benny Moldovanu & Aner Sela & Xianwen Shi, 2012. "Carrots And Sticks: Prizes And Punishments In Contests," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 50(2), pages 453-462, April.
    17. Kevin J. Boudreau & Nicola Lacetera & Karim R. Lakhani, 2011. "Incentives and Problem Uncertainty in Innovation Contests: An Empirical Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(5), pages 843-863, May.
    18. Kaplan, Todd R. & Zamir, Shmuel, 2015. "Advances in Auctions," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    19. Faravelli, Marco & Stanca, Luca, 2012. "Single versus multiple-prize all-pay auctions to finance public goods: An experimental analysis," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 677-688.
    20. Ghazala Azmat & Marc Möller, 2009. "Competition among contests," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 40(4), pages 743-768, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • J33 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Compensation Packages; Payment Methods

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdl:ucsdec:qt8637337w. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deucsus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.