The X PRIZE Foundation is researching prizes structured around entrepreneurial solutions to global poverty. The focus is to find methods that catalyze profit-generating firms both in terms of financial as well as human development metrics that address major development challenges in agriculture, capital, education, health and water. The goal of these competitions would be to highlight the most scalable enterprises that create wealth and uplift the widest set of stakeholders from poverty.

Prizes under consideration:

The Village Utility X PRIZE
The X PRIZE Foundation has secured grants to explore a Village Utility X PRIZE. The ultimate objective is to use the power of competition to develop models that enable communities in the developing world to uplift their living standards and break the cycle of global poverty. The global competition would leverage technology-based innovation to develop more effective ways to deliver power, water and connectivity to communities in need in the developing world. This competition will reward invention of such a device and/or ways to distribute that technology.

The Foundation hopes that competitors will:

Provide renewable power, clean drinking water and connectivity to rural communities in a cost-efficient and decentralized manner.

Address critical human needs while simultaneously enabling entrepreneurs to build sustainable economies around core services: water, power and information.

Generate constructive local externalities, such as improved education, enhanced health care and sustained ecologies.

The Village Utility X PRIZE is envisioned to take place in two phases: a “demonstration phase” that incentivizes invention; and, a “deployment race” that rewards implementation. In a manner consistent with the X PRIZE methodology, these stages are not intended to highlight ideas, but rather to compel results.

The intended results of this competition would be to:

Qualify dozens of designs and providers.

Produce hundreds of “training and deployment” approaches to assure long-term operation and maintenance of Village Utility Units.

Generate global visibility & attention.

Assist hundreds of villages and hundreds-of-thousands of villagers.

Create local “water”, “power” and “broadband” entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs will be able to maintain and operate the Village Utility Units, and they will earn money to buy replacement units and upgrades which are manufactured in-country.

Some additional benefits of Village Utility X PRIZE could be:

Encouraging the flow of risk capital to ventures in the world’s least developed countries.

Developing advanced market commitments to ensure market demand and drive down production costs.

Generating global media attention and worldwide enthusiasm for technology-driven models to break the cycle of global poverty.

If you have any ideas for a Global Entrepreneurship X PRIZE, you can propose them here!