Congress & Silicon Valley Billionaires Separately Launch Contests To Drive Forward Innovation

from the seems-like-a-good-idea dept

There's been a growing movement among some to suggest that it would be a lot more practical and useful for students to learn how to code as a part of their education, rather than some other "mandatory" curriculum items. It looks like the House of Representatives is working on a cool little plan to at least incentivize some code learning in schools: a nationwide technology contest for students, encouraging them to develop brand new apps for mobile devices. The hope is that it will help more students not just learn to code, but to learn that they enjoy it and are interested in learning more and going into the technology field. While this may be a "small" program, it's good to see general encouragement towards having people learn to code at a young age.

On the other end of the spectrum, three of Silicon Valley's richest techies, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Yuri Milner, have teamed up for a much larger program a "Breakthrough Prize" for life sciences that will award 11 grants of $3 million each year for major breakthroughs in science.

These are two different approaches towards encouraging more innovation in technology and sciences -- one at the "low" end and one at the "high" end -- but it will be interesting to watch how these kinds of incentive programs develop over time. It would be great to also see more "innovation prizes" that offer up rewards for reaching specific goals, rather than the sort of random "we pick a list of winners" that the Breakthrough Prize functions under. Still, more incentives for innovation can only be a good thing.

Filed Under: app development, innovation, life sciences, mark zuckerber, mobile apps, prizes, sergey brin, yuri milner