The Difference Between Crazy and Driven
Here's a riddle for you. What would cause someone to invest US$25 million to get a return of US$10 million?
Sounds ridiculous. Who in their right mind would take this bet? A negative return of 60%?
Well - it seems that a few would - and it has spawned a movement.
I'm referring to the X Prize and it's derivatives. Originally established to spur entrepreneurs to develop a reusable vehicle that could fly to the edge of space twice within two weeks, it now includes a US$20 million payday for anyone who can put a robotic lander on the moon, take a spin across the lunar landscape, and beam back visuals - sponsored by Google.
And The X Prize Foundation isn't the only one looking at contests as a way to spur innovation...
- Netflix Prize for building an algorithm that predicts movie preferences more accurately than current alternatives
- Amazon.com is offering the the Amazon Web Services Start-Up Challenge where you can win $100,000 in cash and AWS credits, and receive an investment offer from Amazon
- Millennium Grand Challenge in Mathematics for solving one of seven intractable math problems
- Urban Challenge sponsored by the US Department of Defense for building an autonomous car that can navigate through traffic
- Archon X Prize to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days
- Virgin Earth Challenge sponsored by Richard Branson, Al Gore and others to scrub greenhouse gases from the atmosphere
Everyone is on the bandwagon. And for good reason. People love a challenge - and the payoff is more than the money. As the Ansari X Prize demonstrated - it's not the money - but the bragging rights.
Contests such as these serve to drive our internal need to achieve. But I think it does something else.
These contest validate our crazy ideas. If someone invested US$25 million for a dream without the prize attached (whether that be monetary or simple recognition) we would label that person insane - Quixotic - tilting at windmills.
Put a prize to it and they are suddenly driven, visionaries.
What is the crazy thing that should be done in your organization? What is your company's X Prize?
Put a prize to it and change the idea from a delusion to a vision.
