LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--XPRIZE, a nonprofit and global leader in incentivized prize competitions, held its annual Visioneers Summit this past weekend, where proposals for how to deliver impact leveraging the XPRIZE crowdsourcing and incentive competition methodology were evaluated across five specific grand challenges facing humanity. Of the five teams that shared their Impact Proposals, all five global issues were deemed to be viable concepts where an XPRIZE competition is needed and could deliver innovative breakthrough solutions. The team focusing on Alzheimer’s Disease received the highest honors and now advances forward as a top priority for a possible 2018 XPRIZE global competition.
Over the last six months, five Visioneers teams tackled grand challenges facing humanity; challenges that require “Moonshot” innovations to solve. In addition to Alzheimer’s, these included Clean Air, Cybersecurity, Democracy and Voting, and Zero Waste Mining. Over the course of the two-and-a-half-day Summit, presented by Accenture, XPRIZE convened a group of 250 mentors—prominent individuals, including corporate and political leaders, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, artists, technologists, and renowned scientists. This expert gathering then evaluated, critiqued, and ultimately prioritized for XPRIZE each team’s proposal based on a specific set of criteria that are indicative of driving impact via an XPRIZE.
“The Visioneers model leverages leading private-industry practices for evaluating and vetting concepts and ideas for profit, but as a non-profit, we’ve reimagined this process to focus entirely on impact. Similar to a startup where an entrepreneur pitches a new commercial product to a group of VCs and investors for profit, the Visioneers process instead features a Bold Innovator who shares an Impact Proposal – for how an XPRIZE may drive exponential impact on a grand challenge facing humanity – to a network of prominent mentors,” said Marcus Shingles, CEO of XPRIZE. “We are very proud of the five teams and our ecosystem of change-makers involved in Visioneers for their collaboration, feedback, commitment, and passion, which resulted in successfully prioritizing the prize concepts that XPRIZE will launch.”
The Impact Proposals delivered by the five Visioneers Teams are:
Alzheimer’s Disease Team, sponsored by Alzheimer’s Brain Trust
The team, which received the highest honors, focused on designing a revolutionary worldwide challenge that will incentivize ingenuity across a wide array of disciplines and sectors and leverage exponential technologies that will make Alzheimer’s disease a thing of the past, opening a door into the Human Brain 2.0. Led by Philip Edgcumbe, an innovator, entrepreneur, bio-medical engineer, scientist, and doctor-in-training, in partnership with Dr. Ken Dychtwald, world-renowned expert on aging.
Clean Air Team, sponsored by Green China
The team focused on empowering and enabling people everywhere to have clean air, so they live their full lives, realize their full potential, and can, finally, take a deep breath. Led by Christine Harada, who has more than 20 years of experience in leading government and management consulting organizations, most recently serving as the Federal Chief Sustainability Officer for the Obama Administration.
Cybersecurity Team, sponsored by National Research Foundation, Singapore
The team focused on creating a world where emerging technologies can be used to develop integrated, automated, intelligent cybersecurity solutions that scan and protect a wide variety of networks, proactively identify system vulnerabilities, and automatically repair those vulnerabilities, resulting in safer connectivity for all. Led by Yair Laron and Or Suesskind, Laron is a former captain of the 8200 unit of the Israeli Intelligence Corps, an elite division of the Israel Defense Forces which focuses on cybersecurity, and is now Chief of Staff for the Chairman/CEO of Deloitte Israel, leading the innovation practice. Suesskind currently is an innovation consultant for Deloitte Israel and a senior cyber-strategy consultant for the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, and formerly an officer in the Israeli Intelligence Corps.
Will of the People Team, sponsored by Accenture
The team focused on saving democracy and preserving and strengthening self-government. Their Impact Proposal addresses threats to democracy, beginning with the ability for every eligible citizen to vote and to trust and verify that their vote has been counted. Led by Joe Trippi, who has a career of over 40 years in leading major political campaigns in and outside the U.S., including Howard Dean’s presidential run, and was a lead strategist for Jerry Brown’s successful 2010 campaign for Governor of California. Trippi is a serial innovator in politics, an author, and the founder and president of Trippi & Associates.
Zero Waste Mining Team, sponsored by the Chilean Mining Consortium
The team focused on breakthrough innovations to extract critical metals, minerals, and rare earth elements without producing mine tailings and waste, thus avoiding the environmental threats and health hazards of arsenic and acids. Led by Carl Brackpool, a Product & Innovation Manager at Hexagon Mining, research faculty member at the Colorado School of Mines, and was called as a subject matter expert to testify in front of congress at the U.S. House of Representative Subcommittee on Natural Resources hearing concerning 21st century mining technologies.
In addition, tens of millions of dollars were committed at the Summit to fund previous XPRIZE prize initiatives in the areas of cancer, assistive medical devices, and avatar technologies, as well as team concepts to be included in next year’s Visioneers Summit.
As part of XPRIZE’s mission to Build a Bridge to Abundance for All, a Four-Pillar strategic framework is used to deliver impact; the Visioneers Summit (Pillar Two) is the validation and vetting mechanism that serves as the gateway between the strategic prize roadmaps (Pillar One – Strategy) and the competition launch and prize operations (Pillar Three – Execution), ultimately achieving impact at scale (Pillar Four).
For more information, visit www.xprize.org/visioneers.
About XPRIZE
XPRIZE, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is the global leader in designing and implementing innovative competition models to solve the world’s grandest challenges. XPRIZE designs for impact using its “Four Pillar Strategic Framework” which includes impact architecture, impact design, prize development and execution, and impact scale. XPRIZE utilizes a unique combination of gamification, crowdsourcing, incentive prize theory, and exponential technologies as a formula to make 10x (vs. 10%) impact in the grand challenge domains facing our world. XPRIZE’s philosophy is that—under the right circumstances—igniting rapid experimentation from a variety of diverse lenses is the most efficient and effective method to driving exponential impact and solutions to grand challenges. Active competitions include the $30M Google Lunar XPRIZE, the $20M NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, the $15M Global Learning XPRIZE, the $7M Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, the $7M Barbara Bush Foundation Adult Literacy XPRIZE, the $5M IBM Watson AI XPRIZE, the $1.75M Water Abundance XPRIZE, and the $1M Anu and Naveen Jain Women’s Safety XPRIZE. For more information, visit www.xprize.org.
