“We are now (more than ever) empowered as individuals to take on the grand challenges of this planet.”
-Peter Diamandis, Founder of the XPRIZE Foundation
19-year-old Boyan Slat started a school project that became The Ocean Cleanup Foundation. He invented an ocean clean up tool that could remove 7250000 tons of plastic from the world’s oceans in a five year span. This young inventor has found a way to save the ocean environment in a way that might actually turn a profit.
It was a 49 second YouTube video that connected Richard Van As (who lost his fingers in a table saw accident) in South Africa and Ivan Owen, a puppeteer living in the USA. The result? Robohand – an inexpensive, functional 3D-printed prosthetic hand that gave 12-year-old Leon McCarthy the ability to throw a double-hand pass on the basketball court.
XPRIZE Founder Peter Diamandis ended a TED talk by sharing about an online game called “Foldit”. Players compete by figuring out how out how the protein of an amino acid is going to fold. The best player must be a scientist or super computer right? It is a young woman in Manchester who answers phones at a Rehab Clinic by day and is the World’s top Foldit player by night.
Stories like these are popping up all over the place, on social pages like Upworthy, Reddit and personal Facebook timelines. The rising billion are sharing ideas and stories from around the world. If there is one thing that is shared in all cultures, it is the desire to share ideas and make new tools. Right this minute people are tinkering in their homes, talking to each other from across the world and ready “to take on the grand challenges of this planet.”
It's time to turn your ideas into action. You are HeroX.
Solve global challenges and inspire innovation through incentivized competition? Brilliant. Provide an online platform so that anyone can play? That’s the heart of HeroX.
