“I’m worth a million in prizes..” Iggy Pop
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Wow, I really liked this article at the Economist and I wanted to share. It kind of shows how desperate private industry and governments are for really good ideas. And as everyone here knows, I am all about new ideas or ‘building snowmobiles’ and I try to promote that process as much as I can.
But imagine adding incentive to the ‘building snowmobiles’ theme? That is what makes innovation prizes such an interesting and potentially lethal concept for our industry and the war effort. Perhaps I should consider raising prize money for the best construction of a Letter of Marque concept for modern warfare use? How about an innovation prize for low cost, high return warfare ideas? Really open it up to the public, or just offer the contests within the boundaries of an organization. How about an innovation prize for new types of war or business strategies? Or how about for a company logo? To really put it out there, how about using mobile cash as a means to reward locals as a means of gaining ideas for COIN and reconstruction in Afghanistan?
Companies could also offer innovation prizes to those who can come up with the best cost saving ideas, or to new directions in business? There are many complex problems a company could try to solve by putting it out there for their employees to solve through a prize system. It is just one more way to create that unique situation that would allow for your employees to create something important to the company or ‘people will support what they help to create’.
Now the one thing that is most valuable and truly the prize, is business success or victory in war. A company would be smart to not only offer prizes for innovations, but to reward their company as a whole by increasing salaries because they are more profitable. Or offer the benefit in one way or another, which would reward your employees for participating in this innovation prize concept in the first place.
The articles below indicate that this is a major theme throughout the world, and it sounds like most of the experts agree that it works. For companies reading this, InnoCentive is the company that the Economist identified as a platform for innovation prizes. Or you could just start your our prize initiatives. If the US government is jumping all over this stuff with their Challenge.gov site, then our industry could probably stand to benefit from it as well. I would even post it here on the blog if it was open to the industry and public?
As for the problem solvers out there, there are plenty of prizes to go after if you have some big ideas. Thousands of dollars are available and it sounds like these prizes are only increasing in size and number. Just check out the chart below. –Matt
Challenge.gov looking for great ideas
For Corporations (from InnoCentive website)
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Offering a cash prize to encourage innovation is all the rage. Sometimes it works rather well
Aug 5th 2010
A CURIOUS cabal gathered recently in a converted warehouse in San Francisco for a private conference. Among them were some of the world’s leading experts in fields ranging from astrophysics and nanotechnology to health and energy. Also attending were entrepreneurs and captains of industry, including Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, and Ratan Tata, the head of India’s Tata Group. They were brought together to dream up more challenges for the X Prize Foundation, a charitable group which rewards innovation with cash. On July 29th a new challenge was announced: a $1.4m prize for anyone who can come up with a faster way to clean oil spills from the ocean.
The foundation began with the Ansari X Prize: $10m to the first private-sector group able to fly a reusable spacecraft 100km (62 miles) into space twice within two weeks. It was won in 2004 by a team led by Burt Rutan, a pioneering aerospace engineer, and Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft. Other prizes have followed, including the $10m Progressive Automotive X Prize, for green cars that are capable of achieving at least 100mpg, or its equivalent. Peter Diamandis, the entrepreneur who runs the foundation, says he has become convinced that “focused and talented teams in pursuit of a prize and acclaim can change the world.”