XPRIZE provides incentive for radical breakthroughs in innovation
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entures for SimpleFuel, the only finalist group in an ongoing DOE competition to develop home or community hydrogen refueling systems for fuel-cell electric vehicles. SimpleFuel is a consortium of companies with unique contributions, according to Darryl Pollica, team spokesperson and President and CEO of Ivys Inc., one of the member companies. “Our business arrangement will undoubtedly live beyond the competition as we already have aggressive plans to commercialize the hydrogen refueling appliance after the initial competition demonstration.” Credit for the earliest successful challenge competition usually goes to Britain’s 1714 Longitude rewards for methods to determine a ship’s longitude while at sea (see MRS Bulletin 25 [4], [2000], doi:10.1557/ mrs2000.51). The Ansari XPRIZE propelled challenge prizes into the modern spotlight in 2004, when Mojave Aerospace Ventures received a USD$10 million prize for launching a reusable, manned spacecraft into space twice within a span of two weeks. Since then the idea has regained popularity primarily in the United States and Europe. Challenge prizes based outside of the United States and Europe are difficult to find, but corporations, governments, and
Connect with open challenges ec.europa.eu/research/horizonprize www.Challenge.gov www.InnoCentive.com www.Kaggle.com www.NineSigma.com www.openIDEO.com www.xprize.org
foundations across the world are taking notice of their results and showing interest, according to Zenia Tata, executive director of international expansion and global development for XPRIZE. Digital platforms such as NineSigma.com and InnoCentive.com are becoming popular ways to connect visitors worldwide with open challenges from a range of hosts for varying prize amounts. The rise in challenge prizes has caused a growing interest in studying their effectiveness. Initial reviews by McKinsey & Company and others show that welldesigned contests can spur innovation in areas that are beyond the scope of traditional funding mechanisms, but exactly how they will affect the landscape of science research and advancement in the long term remains to be seen.
XPRIZE provides incentive for radical breakthroughs in innovation www.xprize.org By Paul Bunje, Jyotika Virmani, and Marcius Extavour
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e are living in an era of extraordinary disruption. The technological, sociopolitical, and economic changes taking place around the world present innovators with an opportunity to apply groundbreaking research to challenges of worldwide importance. Technologies on an exponential growth path (such as advanced robotics, ubiquitous sensors, synthetic biology) are rapidly becoming a part of our daily lives. These exponential technologies have the
potential to lead to innovative solutions to some of the world’s grand challenges. Importantly, many of these exponential technologies critically depend upon advances in materials science. Advanced materials are at the heart of innovative solutions to many of the world’s biggest problems and opportunities. The XPRIZE Foundation relies on the
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