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.