If you look at some of the sponsored HeroX Challenges, you’ll see NASA, AEM, CLEAR, and other well-funded acronyms. But what are you to do if you, your community, or your organization face a pressing problem, and you lack the spare cash to offer as an incentive prize?
Consider: the tournament-style competition.
There are hundreds of individuals, groups, and institutions that would like to advertise their expertise in the field. The question is - how? What kind of platform could showcase skill at precision problem-solving to a large audience? The answer is simple: incentive competitions.
This event gives participants the opportunity to prove their expertise and out-perform their rivals. That's a pretty significant value in itself, so much so that competitors might as well be stakeholders.
An incentive prize tournament can be as small or as large as necessary. Consider the following examples:
Pool Resources from Other Stakeholders
Let's start with a simple thought exercise with something familiar. Imagine local high school students want to run an incentive prize to solve a problem for their school. Assuming the high school has a universal “homeroom," the students could enlist buy-in from at least half of these classes. In this way, each class becomes a stakeholder in the solution.
If ten homerooms fundraise $100 dollars to enter the tournament, the cash prize is now $1,000. Simple enough. Now there's quite an incentive (especially for teenagers.)
Take it one step further and students could establish a secondary entry fee per homeroom to make their students eligible to compete. Imagine this competitor buy-in raises a few extra hundred dollars for the prize purse. Ensuring competitors are also stakeholders creates an incentive multiplier effect, without needing more cash!
Harness a University
Let's graduate the example to a University level, where there's a whole new world of possibilty. A tournament-style competition could pit different disciplines and departments against each other. In the way of big schools, a competitive spirit and rivalry is sure to emerge as a driving force behind the prize. A large student body would also afford a significant amount of cash buy-in. The school itself would have significant reason to invest in the prize amount. Nothing says "cutting-edge" like a crowd-sourcing competition inside of a higher learning institution.
Look Around Your Industry
As you're reading this, you may have already thought: if it could work for a school, why not a business? No matter the size, just about any company stands to gain from organizing an innovation tournament.
What is a problem in your industry?
What plagues your peers?
What invention might revolutionize your service?
Organize a HeroX Tournament and give your company the opportunity to compete and win, not only a cash prize, but recognition as an industry leader.
