X-Prize winners, heros, and setting up Gov2.0 prizes / challenges – livingblogging #pfgov conference

John Shore, Senior Director, PIA X-Prize
X-Prize Foundation
http://www.xprize.org/

Mission: To bring about radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity

Some thoughts on best practices for running a prize or challenge to solve a problem, meet a need.

Hallmark attributes of large incentive prize competitions
High Leverage
Efficiency
Encourage industry development

Donate to a non-profit Leverage 1:1 $
Offer a matching prize Leverage 2:1 $$
Offer a prize competition Leverage 5:1 $$$$$

Prize Development Master Process: Hard to do. Good prize has a simple statement, but behind it is an extremely complex process.
“Go to moon, drive around, send back images”
“Create a desirable, affordable, 100mpg car that’s easy to mass produce”
Etc.

Understand why people want to win contests and prizes… actual prize, innovation, contribution, fame, competition, future opportunities, etc. People want to be heroes, this is an opportunity. Mythology of achieving new things.

Prizes / contest should be light on bureaucracy — you want entrepreneurial responses.

Gov can partner with existing orgs to leverage resources (money, influence, people, processes) to do R&D prizes for Government needs.

As with all the live-blogging posts, we’ll update them with links to original presentation files when possible (ppt files, etc.)

Q: What becomes of 2nd place, 3rd place teams in terms of progress, financing, etc.?
A: Not a lot of data about this — with the space prize, I know several challengers are still developing programs after the prize

Q: Can you elaborate on incentives for Gov-Industry collaboration of offer prizes?
A: Ultimately it comes down to things like: “Is there a problem I’d like to see solved?” and “I want to help solve this problem.”