I am not sure that generates much real improvement in the world, surely funding research is more impactful that giving a prize for work that would have been done anyway?
My hunch would be that early on in the process of innovation, you're quite a distance from profiting from that research. Unless you have pockets deep enough to go all the way, there's potentially value in encouraging many people to try and get slightly further on solving challenging problems in the open, so that all can learn.