XPRIZE Announces HeroX Spin-Off
New Incentive Prize Platform Leverages Crowdsourcing and Competition Trends to Transform Business and Social Innovation
LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--XPRIZE, the global leader in incentivized prize competitions, today introduced spin-off for-profit venture HeroX — a new type of economic engine designed to bring about radical business, technological and social innovation to benefit local and global communities, inspire new industries and catalyze markets.
“We constantly heard from people all around the world wanting to know how to launch their own incentive prize challenges”
Responding to the growing global demand for incentive, prize-based business models to drive open innovation, the HeroX platform complements XPRIZE’s vision for large-scale, high-profile prizes by facilitating many more, smaller challenges — many of them local — that are accessible to a larger number of competitors.
Started as a skunk works project incubated by XPRIZE and City Light Capital, HeroX was spun out as a standalone company in 2013. The company’s co-founders are XPRIZE Foundation Chairman Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, serial entrepreneur Christian Cotichini, incentive prize and innovation expert Emily Fowler, and leading impact investor, City Light Capital.
“Our mission is to foster innovation through incentivized competition,” said Vice Chairman and President of XPRIZE, Robert K. Weiss. “The HeroX platform extends and complements our mission at XPRIZE. We are proud of the progress HeroX has made.”
“Prizes change what people believe is possible,” said HeroX CEO Christian Cotichini. “HeroX fast-tracks innovation and spurs the rapidly growing movement of heroes — the problem solvers, misfit thinkers and crazy dreamers who are changing the world one challenge at a time. Our crowdsourced solutions methodology has caught on quickly and has proven successful for challenge creators such as entrepreneurs, corporations, venture capitalists, non-profits and municipalities.”
“We constantly heard from people all around the world wanting to know how to launch their own incentive prize challenges,” said HeroX Vice President Emily Fowler. “We have now created a path for those people. No credentials are required — just a curious mind and a level of persistence that produces the right solution. It's about letting the best idea win, no matter where it comes from. Anyone can be a hero.”
“It is often frustrating to see important problems go unsolved due to ineffective or outdated approaches to innovation,” said Managing Partner and cofounder of City Light Capital, Josh Cohen. “The HeroX prize model and platform leverage technology in a customizable way to scale solutions with measurable social impact.”
HeroX will be conducting a public, informational Webcast on Friday, March 27, 2015 at 11:30 a.m. PT. Registration: www.HeroX.com.
About XPRIZE www.xprize.org
Founded in 1995, XPRIZE is the leading organization solving the world’s Grand Challenges by creating and managing large-scale, high-profile, incentivized prizes in five areas: Learning; Exploration; Energy & Environment; Global Development; and Life Sciences. Active prizes include the $30M Google Lunar XPRIZE, the $15M Global Learning XPRIZE, the $10M Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE, and the $2M Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE.
Contacts
XPRIZE
Eric Desatnik, 310-741-4892
Media Contact:
Alexandra Pony
250.858.0656
Source HeroX
