compete to innovate smlxl

Competing to Innovate

For many people the idea that competitions can spur on innovation

and innovative breakthroughs is about as inspiring as an egg and

spoon race

alan moore www.smlxtralarge.com | mit/sloan/boston 2011

The story of Eden But the Eden project in Cornwall is a great example of

what happens when we engage in competitions


Tim Smit the catalyst for the Eden Project refused to accept that their initial proposal was “red lighted” at the first round, convincing his team to carry on working/competing – the result was winning the Millennium prize


Eden contributes £1bn to Cornish Economy Created 500 direct jobs Supports 3000 jobs locally RIBA Award 2001


Be realistic imagine the impossible

The fight for economic survival The fight for natural resources The fight for the most talented The fight for a better and fairer society

Be realistic imagine the impossible

Poster from Paris riots 1968

We must seek transformation in a world where the only thing that is certain is uncertainty


And today we faced with some big issues and difficult dilemmas

The fight for economic survival The fight for natural resources The fight for the most talented The fight for a better and fairer society


Challenges of the modern world intractable and complex dilemmas: In every sector we need innovation to solve these complex dilemmas. Yet a failure for existing organisations to truly innovate; healthcare, social, education, commerce, regional development

What we face is a design problem

The solution is innovation: those economies, argues Will Hutton prepared to stay open and create national innovation architectures that support a diversified landscape of vigorous firms, institutions and technologies will repeat the amazing feat of the British Industrial Revolution at the end of the 18th Century – But such innovation eco-systems will not be created spontaneously we need to develop an interconnected eco-system that can respond to these dilemma’s by designing answers that today do not exist.


How do we do that? How do we unleash our intelligence

and apply our creativity? How can we

Accelerate innovation?

hundretwasser


Competition Enter competitions that can attract people passionate about solving

real world problems. These need to be open access attracting a true divergence of knowledge as I argue, nobody is as clever as

everybody, or as Eric Raymond would say, “with many eyes all bugs are shallow”.

Closed knowledge systems on the other hand tend to die.


Threadless Local Motors

TopCoder.com, has figured out how to use markets and communities concurrently.

TopCoder is a company which administers contests in computer programming. TopCoder hosts fortnightly online competitions — known as SRMs or “single round matches” — as well as weekly competitions algorithm in design and development. The work in design and development produces useful software which is licensed for profit by TopCoder. Competitors involved in the creation of these components are paid royalties based on these sales. The software resulting from algorithm competitions — and the less-frequent marathon matches — is not usually directly useful, but sponsor companies sometimes provide money to pay the victors. Statistics (including an overall “rating” for each developer) are tracked over time for competitors in each category.

An algorithm problem provided by the Integrated Medical Model Team at NASA

Experimental Marathon Match will include an algorithm problem provided by the Integrated Medical Model Team at NASA . In this contest programmers will be asked to help NASA optimize a space flight medical kit for astronauts. We believe that the TopCoder community may have an interesting take on this problem and could potentially come up with a breakthrough that will help NASA explore our universe.

This Experimental Marathon Match event has over $25,000 in prizes! In addition, 10 participants will get VIP access to one of the few remaining NASA shuttle launches and all contestants who actively participate will receive a limited edition, personalized TopCoder/NASA T-shirt.


Local Motors uses competition to innovate in automotive design, and engineering


This roundel carries the name of the designer of body styling on every Rally Fighter produced

Co-creation

“I” Needs “We”

to truly be “I”

Carl Jung

So important observations on the dynamics of competition


Co-creation matters People embrace what they

create.

competition + co-creation = community alan moore www.smlxtralarge.com | mit/sloan/boston 2011

Craftmanship Competition can inspire people to give their

creative best, to commit to their craft, to be ‘engaged’


Open Competitions need to

attract diversity


Competitions create in a sense a false deadline, but what they do is focus the mind… From NASA, Local Motors, Threadless, Top Coder, Innocentive,

Your Encore, are all contemporary examples of unleashing innovation through the framework of competition that are transformative. What in gaming terms is called an Epic win… Of course there are different reasons for creating competitions such as the Pultizer, The James Dyson prize an international award that encourages next generation industrial designers, or the Ansari X prize The prize $10m but $100m was spent overall to win that prize.

McKinsey report – The Power of Prizes

1. To spur the development of a revolutionary solution The Longitude Prize (The Longitude Act was an Act of Parliament of the

United Kingdom passed in July 1714 during the reign of Queen Anne. It established the Board of Longitude and offered a monetary reward for anyone who could find a simple and practical method for the precise determination of a ship's longitude)

3. To set a standard for an entire field – Nobel prize and number of academics that have one such a prize

4. To draw attention to an entire industry – Ortieg prize – Lindburgh and non-stop flight Paris to NYC


Competitions provide the ability to shift risk, and generate interest through networked communication technologies.


But why do we compete?

We compete not for money per se, but more often we respond to the call of a higher order purpose and something we are passionate about which when tapped is a deep human motivation – we seek

transformation


Reputation = Recognition


pre 1991 97%

after 1991 78%

Nobel and Pulitzer

Specific goals

Before 1991 97% of the value of big prizes was dedicated that recognized prior achievement Nobel or Pultizer but since 1991 78% of new prize money dedicated to

solving specific goals. In effect the unleashing of innovation. Yet Will Hutton, a well know Economist and writer from the UK

says there is little political cultural or business appreciation of the importance of competition

in stimulating innovation…


Takeaways:

No matter what industry you are in creating competitions can be a means of accelerating innovation, in the public sector, academia, or commercially.


Takeaways:


With the right structure competition can accelerate innovation and dramatically enable a company to run much leaner as Local Motors (Cars built 5x quicker 100 x less the capital cost – competitions in part enables a much leaner run rate)

Bring social and regional development benefits Eden bringing much needed revenues and media attention into a struggling region and economy, A school building created networked impacts on its immediate environment. Clapham School that reduced truancy and local petty crime.

Create Epic Wins: The Saltire prize which could bring economic autonomy and sustainability to a region


Takeaways:


With the right structure competition can dramatically enable a company to run much leaner as Local Motors (Cars built 5x quicker 100 x less he capital cost) or GoldCorp can demonstrate. Goldcorp costs down 80% production up 900%. Or bring social benefits Eden bringing much needed revenues and media attention into a struggling region and economy, Buildings created networked impacts on its immediate environment.

There is a long historical trend that demonstrates that undertaken in the right way competition harnesses knowledge and intelligence that otherwise would never have been accessed.

Competition is means of meaningfully engaging communities of interest and passion, and in fact is in many ways a vital strand of the DNA of our networked world.

It needs rigorous structure but it can inspire people to raise their game and step forward as unlikely candidates to helping us imagine and then realize the impossible.

If you are not running a competition then maybe you are not innovating hard enough


Thank you Contact: [email protected] www.smlxtralarge.com Twitter: @alansmlxl

video: Innovation HP HQ Cupertino: Local Motors, GrowVC, txteagle http://ht.ly/3H34v

sxsw 2010: Local Motors and making sense of a non-linear world http://ht.ly/3H37U


compete to innovate smlxl

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