J. Kent Pepper's been enthralled with inducement prizes ever since the NY Times printed a story 10 years ago about Robert Zubrin's proposal for a $20 Billion Mars Prize. After that he watched as prizes for science and technology, the X prize, the military's DARPA Grand Challenge, and the Westinghouse prize, inspired scientists and middle schoolers alike to create amazing advances in many fields.
In J. Kent Pepper's opinion, prizes are the most efficient means to innovation, calling upon a large public to compete and create with freedom, under the inducement of a prize. (For a fabulous trip through a huge array of such space and technology prizes, look at SpacePrize) A cool history of prizes on the Big Carrot FAQ page attributes developments as far back as the 1700's from the food canning process and the parking meter (sigh) to NetFlix's $1M ongoing prize for a 10% improvement in their movie recommendation algorithm to prize-type challenges.
But until now, prizes have largely remained the domain of billionaires, deep-pocketed corporations, and the government.
In 2006, it dawned Pepper that, using the internet, communities of people could collaborate on their own prizes--creating together the desired solutions to challenges faced by the community, creating the design requirements, and collaborating and advocating for the funding--to inspire innovations that serve the community. He spent some time designing a process, getting a patent, and developing Big Carrot, a big-hearted open-source Inducement Prize Generator IPG (I made that up). He calls it the "democratization of innovation". I call it amazing and exciting--the prospect of pulling people together around your community or the globe to participate in solving the challenges we face. With a prize at the end!
His wildly successful beta-test of the Big Carrot concept, the not-Mac Challenge, awarded prize winner, Ben Spink, with $8600, money raised largely by 172 Mac users who were looking for an opensource integration program that normally costs users $99/year for upgrades.
Though the not-Mac challenge met a need of the Mac community, other challenges range from the small to national to global. BigCarrot now has prizes for everything from an Automotive X Prize, in the Environment category, for a super-efficient car that people will want to buy, to a prize in the Computers category to get Linus Torvald (father of Linux) a cameo on the Simpsons.
Pepper is a marketing professional by day who has participated in campaigns for Yahoo, Sun, Lexus and HP among others. He told me that he was influenced early in his marketing career by the work of Tibor Kalman, the famed designer who in the 90's pioneered the combining of marketing with a global awareness/multicultural emphasis in his founding of Beneton's "Colors" magazine.
When I asked him, "Why BigCarrot?", he gave me my very favorite answer: "To change the world." He talked about the possibilities of his current pet project, the Greywater Recycling Challenge which he hopes to see take off among on-line environmental communities. BigCarrot, he says, is a chance to facilitate "the evening out of the playing field for innovation" and gives individuals and communities the opportunity to proactively advocate for and create solutions that are most relevant to them. As he's talking, I'm imagining communities all over who might someday have simple greywater recycling programs, just because BigCarrot had a prize.(I like this idea more than parking meters.)
The possibilities for innovation are endless with this model. If anyone could be as excited about BigCarrot as J. Kent Pepper, it was me after that phone call.
And, the best news: Beginning today, BigCarrot is inviting bloggers and their communities to build their own challenges. Kent is encouraging all of us to rally our readers and communities to pick a topic, waiving the prize origination fee and offering to contribute the first $250 to the prize. The site hosts forums for discussions about potential or current prizes, too, another chance to interact with your readers--a win/win/win.
Would you be willing to contribute a little to see some geniuses tackle a problem that you or your community cares about? Please share this with your friends, your blogger friends, the geniuses in your life, and your communities. This is a Good Idea.
In fact, this gives me an idea for HumanKind Challenge #4. If you're a HumanKind reader, and have ideas for our own HumanKind Challenge #4 ala BigCarrot, email me and we can collaborate on a prize proposal. Stay tuned. This will be fun.
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