Science & Technology

The latest open call from the XPRIZE Foundation asks innovators around the world to help it design future XPRIZEs in five key areas: Saving Coral Reefs, Off-Grid Energy for the Developing World, Disaster Prediction, Lifting Farmers Out of Poverty and Feeding the Next Billion.

One of the Grand Challenge Areas, the XPRIZE Ocean Saving Coral Reefs prize. seeks innovations that can scale to protect and restore coral reefs.

For the first time, XPRIZE will use the HeroX crowdsourcing platform to source hundreds of XPRIZE designs, and submitting teams may be selected to ultimately compete to further develop their concepts for future XPRIZEs.

Normally the XPRIZE Foundation turns to its internal team or external experts to develop competitions, and then asks the crowd to solve its grand challenge competitions. Instead, this year XPRIZE is using crowdsourcing at the beginning of its prize development process, as well as to, eventually, actually solve the challenges.

“At XPRIZE, we believe the crowd is able to attack and solve the world’s grandest challenges. This year we are also testing the hypothesis that the crowd can also design XPRIZEs in a fashion that will help us get our work done faster, better and cheaper,” said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, XPRIZE founder and executive chairman. “We believe that the best way to predict the future is to create it yourself. Building on HeroX and our annual Visioneering Summit, we look forward to taking the crowd’s participation to the next level and empowering the public to architect the future.”

Teams entering the 2018 Visioneering Prize-Design Challenge will have the option to watch a brief “Master’s Class” video on designing an XPRIZE taught by Diamandis, and then submit their detailed prize design entry. Their entry will include their proposed name of the prize, the prize purse, the detailed competition rules and much more. Teams can enter as many times as they wish. Entries from around the world are encouraged.

The winning teams from the HeroX competition will win a variety of prizes valued in total at more than $100K. This includes event airfare and hotel, and access to XPRIZE’s Visioneering event; plus cash purses ranging from $10K to $25K. The designers of the best concepts submitted through HeroX will work with XPRIZE experts to refine their prizes before taking a global stage later this year at the Visioneering Summit.

This year, XPRIZE is also fortunate to have support from Accenture. The global professional services company is providing expert innovators and impact designers for each of the five key areas. These teams will simultaneously work on their own competition designs under a separate track.

More detail on the key areas and sponsors include:

Saving Corals Reefs, sponsored by the XPRIZE Ocean Initiative: The XPRIZE Ocean Initiative is a commitment to design and launch five ocean XPRIZE competitions with the vision to make the ocean healthy, valued, and understood. The Saving Coral Reefs prize seeks urgently needed innovations that can scale to protect and restore coral reefs.

Energy of the Future, sponsored by KinGo: KinGo aims to bring progress to off-grid communities through decentralized clean energy. The Energy of the Future prize aims to foster breakthrough innovations around energy generation technologies that will enable humanity to eradicate energy poverty as 1.2 billion people around the world still live without access to power.

Natural Disaster Prediction, sponsored by Fairfax Financial Holdings: Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited is a holding company which, through its subsidiaries, is engaged in property and casualty insurance and reinsurance, and investment management. TheNatural Disaster Prediction prize aims to save lives and prevent economic loss through better mechanisms to predict and prevent the impact of natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes.

Lifting Farmers Out of Poverty, sponsored by Gagan Gupta: Gagan Gupta, based in Gabon, Africa, is passionate about creating a revolutionary marketplace for farmers. The Lifting Farmers Out of Poverty prize is focused on exponentially increasing the income for millions of farmers living on less than $2 dollars a day.

Feeding the Next Billion, sponsored by The Tony Robbins Foundation and Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research: The Tony Robbins Foundation is a nonprofit created to empower individuals and organizations to make a significant difference in the quality of life of people often forgotten. The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, established through bipartisan congressional support in the 2014 Farm Bill, is a nonprofit that builds unique partnerships to support innovative science addressing today’s food and agriculture challenges. The Feeding the Next Billion prize is focused on ensuring that the 10% of the growing global population that remains undernourished has access to nutritious food produced in a sustainable way.

There are three phases to the HeroX Visioneering 2018 Design Competition: Phase I: Ideation, Phase II: Design Hackathon, and Phase III: Visioneering Summit.

To enter Phase I, XPRIZE invites the public to choose a focus area and submit a high-level prize design concept paired with a two-minute video pitch for evaluation to XPRIZE by July 23.

In Phase II, up to three HeroX semi-finalists in each focus area will be invited to an all-expenses paid trip to XPRIZE Headquarters in Los Angeles in August to attend a two-day Design Hackathon and pitch their competition concept. The semi-finalist HeroX teams will work with experts out of Accenture, XPRIZE Innovation Board members, and XPRIZE staff during a two-day event aimed to vet, redesign and improve the prize designs. One HeroX team from each focus area will be chosen to receive a $5K cash prize and advance to Phase III.

In Phase III, the annual XPRIZE Visioneering Summit will bring together 300 leading world-renowned executives and innovators for three days to evaluate and fund competition designs. The teams selected to attend Visioneering will present their ideas on the mainstage and advocate for their competition designs to receive funding from the Summit participants. If an idea from a HeroX team is then selected to move forward beyond Visioneering, they will receive the HeroX Visioneering 2018 Design Competition’s top $25K cash prize. The top-performing design at the Visioneering Summit will emerge as XPRIZE’s Design of the Year.

To learn more about the HeroX Visioneering 2018 Design Competition including deadlines, submission requirements, and full judging criteria, and to sign up for the challenge, click here.

To learn more about Visioneering 2018, click here.