Prize Development
The Prize Development department designs incentive competitions aimed to capture the imagination of the public, spur innovation, and accelerate the rate of positive change across the globe. New prize competitions focus on pushing the limit of what is currently possible and will serve to change the ways in which we see ourselves and how we live on this planet..
There are two types of X PRIZE competitions: the X PRIZE and the X CHALLENGE:
An X PRIZE is an award of $10 million or more given to the first team to achieve a specific goal, set by the X PRIZE Foundation, which has the potential to positively impact individuals around the world. Rather than awarding money to honor past achievements or directly funding research, an X PRIZE incites innovation by tapping into our competitive and entrepreneurial spirits.
An X CHALLENGE, on the other hand, is a prize of up to $2.5 million, awarded for solving a well-defined technical problem that has no clear path to a solution or is perceived as difficult. Unlike an X PRIZE, which seeks to stimulate or catalyze an entire market, an X CHALLENGE seeks to produce a breakthrough technological or behavioral solution to a specific market need.
Both the X PRIZE and the X CHALLENGE can be developed in one of four different Prize Groups: Exploration (Space & Deep Ocean); Energy & Environment; Education & Global Development; and Life Sciences.
Education and Global Development
The Education and Global Development Prize Group will focus on finding 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.
Energy and Environment
The Energy and Environment Prize Group includes the development of prizes that will end our addiction to oil and stem the harmful effects of climate change. We are looking for breakthroughs in clean fuels, renewable energy, energy efficiency, energy storage, carbon reduction, and sustainable housing.
Exploration
The vision of the Exploration Prize Group is to expand the use of space, the ocean and other unexplored frontiers in order to improve life on Earth and extend life beyond the confines of land. We believe we can achieve these objectives by researching space and Earth’s oceans; accessing and conserving their resources; catalyzing private, non-governmental activity; and tapping into our innate wonder about the Earth, the Universe and our place within each.
Life Sciences
The Life Sciences Prize Group will focus on creating competitions that will stimulate innovative breakthroughs in molecular biology, stem cell research, bionics; organogenesis, synthetic biology, and artificial intelligence in order to improve health care and extend healthy living. The X PRIZE Foundation looks to accelerate the real-world impact of science, technology, and information related to the worldwide optimization of health and the elimination of illness and disease.
The Prize Design Process
The X PRIZE Foundation is born of the marriage between the left and the right brains. This means that opportunities are seized, strategies are implemented, and problems are solved with an emphasis on creative solutions, methods, and output. In order to achieve this balance, we are rooted within a firm trust of our gut intuition; the intuition that guides the rigorous and innovative processes that have combined to form the proprietary Prize Design Process. Every X PRIZE and X CHALLENGE competition is designed to solve a problem that significantly impacts the welfare of future progress of humanity by giving birth to a new capability or industry, or radically rejuvenating or reforming an existing industry.
There are four major phases to the Prize Design Process:
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Distillation: Distillation is about research. The objective is to define the appropriate territory for a Prize Design teams to work within. We structure a territory that is creatively fertile, so that many ideas are able to be harvested. A fertile creative ground ensures that the most powerful creative idea is brought forth.
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Revelation: Revelation is about creativity. The objective is to gain insight and uncover one idea that may evolve into the most powerful prize design idea.
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Mission: Mission is about inspiration and clarity. The objective is to create direction, establish success criteria, and design the leading prize concept into a set of specific parameters, rules, standards and stakeholder impacts.
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Incarnation: Incarnation is about the manifestation of the creative. The objective is to produce a complete Business Plan and identify the appropriate operational resources to ensure the effective and successful launch and execution of the newly designed X PRIZE or X CHALLENGE competition.
To lead us through the four phases, a multi-disciplinary team is constructed. Made up of Prize Design experts, business strategists, and a variety of Creative Thought and Industry Leaders, this multi-faceted team ensures the input of a variety of perspectives. In addition, the hybrid team members rely on each other in order to function, making each member vitally integral to the Creative Process.
The Prize Design process can take up to eight months to complete, and each time the Prize Development team begins the process anew, we focus 100% of our efforts on creating an exciting, memorable, and monumental competition unlike anything else that has ever been done before. Each successfully designed X PRIZE or X CHALLENGE propels the X PRIZE Foundation towards our goal of implementing revolution through competition.
