Recently I cam across an article about scientific stagnation, well the article isn't just about science, but all creative areas and unfortunately, they are all stagnating. In the movie industry we are only making re-runs, and in science we are only publishing incremental ideas. Both though, because of data and focus groups know that these will be rewarded and because it gets the grant money and everyone goes and sees spider man 3 or 4 or whatever it is now. The author writes that people like familiar surprises, which is true, and also in science funders typically never fund projects they know nothing about. But weirdly all these re-runs and incremental ideas seems to trick people into thinking there is nothing new to be discovered, that its already been done. When I talk to scientists around me about discoveries they always say similar things, that everything has been discovered, or you need more money to make discoveries. Which could be the case, as there are so many scientists in the world, that all the ideas have already been thought of. However, a paper the article above cites says otherwise (I recommend the read, its not too jargony) in this it implicates the systems that rewards as the culprit. So in science its the obsession with citations. Thus more people move in to crowded areas, and in movies its the obsession with tickets sold. The conclusion of this is to somehow have a quantifiable measure of novelty, and apply that as a metric would push people to think in that way. But I worry we are already a bit stuck.
Day in and day out while training (writing,reading,lifting,whatever-else-your-domain-demands) they will sweat and exert effort thinking of the prize. Until they either receive it or they become disilliusioned.
The true prize is to know that nobody can craft a prize that will satisfy you forever. That can only be found elsewhere but never bought or earned through society.