FAQ

XPRIZE

Find answers to frequently asked questions here.

• What is XPRIZE?
• What is an XPRIZE competition?
• What is an Impact Roadmap?
• What is a Prize Design?
• How can I help?
• What's in it for me?

If you have other questions, or need help, please let us know here.

If you have feedback or suggestions about the community, please share them in this discussion.

XPRIZE

What is XPRIZE?

Since 1994, XPRIZE has designed and launched 17 prize competitions in the domains of space, oceans, education, health, energy, environment, transportation, safety and robotics.

We believe that solutions can come from anyone, anywhere. Scientists, engineers, academics, entrepreneurs and other innovators with new ideas from all over the world are invited to form teams and compete to win the prize. Rather than throw money at a problem, we incentivize finding solutions and challenge the world to do it.

Our first XPRIZE, the $10 million Ansari XPRIZE for private spaceflight, spurred an industry and created exponential breakthroughs. Since then, we have launched over $140 million in prize purses, including the $15 million Global Learning XPRIZE, the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE and the $1.4 million Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup XPRIZE.

Each of these has created an industry-changing technology that brings us closer to a better, safer and more sustainable world.

The mission of XPRIZE is to:

1. Clearly articulate a vision of a preferred and positive future across a set of domains;
2. Identify a roadmap of breakthroughs needed to get there, and;
3. Establish incentive competitions that focus the resources, talent and technology required to enable those breakthroughs and accelerate that future.

We want to inspire and guide innovators to create breakthroughs enabling a world of abundance -- a world where every man, woman and child can access all the energy, clean drinking-water, shelter, education and healthcare they require.

XPRIZE

What is an XPRIZE competition?

An XPRIZE is a highly leveraged and incentivized prize competition that pushes the limits of what is possible to change the world for the better. 

An XPRIZE aims to capture the world’s imagination and inspire others to reach for truly transformative goals, thereby spurring innovation and accelerating the pace of positive change. 

An XPRIZE: 

• Sets an audacious but achievable goal. 
• Democratizes innovation.
• Catalyzes markets by targeting failures.
• Defines the problem but not the solution.
• Is telegenic and easy to convey.
• Is highly leverageable and drives investment.
• Has clear objectives and simple rules.
• Provides vision and hope.

XPRIZE

What is an Impact Roadmap?

An Impact Roadmap is an analytical tool for understanding persistent problems and barriers that make up grand challenges in various domains, as well as the actions that key stakeholders can take to overcome them and achieve a preferred future state.

Grand challenges comprise a combination of complex and overlapping social, technological, economic, environmental and policy issues. An Impact Roadmap will identify these challenges and highlight the most effective actions to address them and accelerate progress toward a more positive future.

XPRIZE is using Impact Roadmaps to help identify potential XPRIZE competitions and other actions that can accelerate a bridge to abundance for all, in domains including shelter and infrastructure; energy and resources; planet and environment; health and wellness; learning and human potential; civil society; and space and new frontiers. Emerging, exponential technologies and other innovations in policy and financing have the potential to address grand challenges in these areas, but they require new action by key stakeholders and innovators from around the globe. By promoting the use of exponential technologies in disruptive new ways, XPRIZE is aiming to help create a better world -- today.

XPRIZE

What is a Prize Design?

Prize Designs are a process through which ideas are transformed into XPRIZE competitions.

Designing an XPRIZE competition is both a creative and an analytical process that identifies technological, behavioral, and policy factors to a particular problem, and creates rules and regulations to spur innovation through an incentivized prize model. This process relies on open collaboration from innovators, industry leaders, academia, government, non-governmental organizations and the general public to ensure the design of the best competition possible.

XPRIZE

How can I help?

We need your subject-matter expertise, knowledge, and experience to inform and guide us throughout the process of developing Impact Roadmaps and designing prizes.

We want your input to, among other things:

• Identify relevant resources;
• Make sense of the existing research;
• Discover and assess emerging and promising innovations, and;
• Validate our analysis

We will rely on your contributions to identify needed breakthroughs, assess how they solve identified grand challenges, and help us ensure they are audacious yet actionable to help us chart a transformative path for humanity.

XPRIZE

What's in it for me?

We know your time is precious, and we appreciate your participation and input.

None of the other benefits below come close to the reward of knowing that you contributed to a truly transformative breakthrough.

We will regularly announce the most prolific community members to recognize their contributions. Participation allows you to:

• Network with diverse stakeholders;
• Brainstorm with top experts;
• Promote your work;
• Earn rewards, including trips to XPRIZE labs; and
• Be featured in XPRIZE blogs and podcasts.