Can prizes change behavior? Can prizes change public delivery systems? Some advisors remain skeptical on both accounts, but we will demonstrate in the decade to come that well structured prizes and inspiring competitions can spur technological innovations and be a powerful social change lever. The three prizes that X PRIZE has launched—Ansari, Archon and Google—are technology challenges. They require a team to perform a difficult and important feat. In doing so, they change the world’s view of what is possible and lead to a new or reshaped market. Another design that we’re considering in health, education, energy, and global entrepreneurship is a prize for dramatically improved outcomes in a defined population. Measuring outcomes at scale is obviously more difficult that a single (or repeated) technology feat. So why go to the trouble of involving lots of people? In short, behavior matters. Consider health and education. There are both a function of

      Expectations: personal and communal (i.e., family, friends, teacher, doctor)
      Effort: sustained effort over time to be health or smart
      Experiences: how a person interacts with a system and how efficiently and consistently that system deploys its core technologies (i.e., access to quality learning and care)

We see TV dramas weekly that portray the power of effort and expectation—heroic effort by an individual that changes his/her life and lives around him/her. Heroes typically play an important role in major societal change; they help change perceptions of what’s possible. However, despite the heroic effort of teachers and doctors worldwide it has not been sufficient to achieve quality at scale—the inertia of the public system squelches heroic effort. Likewise, new technologies (e.g., classroom innovations, wellness routines) frequently show promise for a small group but fail to achieve benefit at scale. As a result, prizes for heroic effort and small scale innovation are not likely to lead to widespread benefit. Similarly, there’s limited benefit to traditional philanthropic demonstration projects without a powerful galvanizing effort to change perception and public policy. Well constructed media savvy prizes can do both—promote technology innovation and demonstrating its impact at scale by changing perceptions and public systems/policy. More than demonstrations, mega-prizes may have the potential to be a social change force in and of themselves. Imagine thousands of households reducing their energy consumption; imagine thousands of people around the world participating in a math competition; imagine thousands of people living longer as a result of longevity challenge. These global prizes would:

• Provide incentives investment in technology innovation and service improvement
• Promote positive peer pressure (e.g., neighborhoods, social networks) of group behavior change
• Create sufficient scale and momentum that they force system and policy change at scale

These population prizes may include incentives for participants—either a portion of the prize or a sustainable incentive system as part of the solution. Population prizes are harder to manage and measure, but they will be an important part of our portfolio in categories where consumer behavior matters a great deal and where innovations have not or may not gone to scale. We attack blockages and sometimes that’s our behavior.