X Prize- Jackpot for Innovation

The practice of posting rewards for invention goes back centuries, but the California-based X Prize Foundation upped the ante in 1996, when it offered the biggest such reward in history—$10 million—for the first successful private space flight. Today the foundation is developing prizes of up to $30 million for solutions to outsized challenges in space exploration, life sciences, energy, the environment, education, and social entrepreneurship. Read interview with X Prize CEO Pater H Daimandis in HBR. Future X prizes include Village Utility X prize to develop/ diffuse technology based innovations for improved ways to deliver water, power, connectivity to rural areas.