‘The Amazing Race,’ as Played in the Lab

NY Times
March 16, 2008

Ping

By G. PASCAL ZACHARY

WHAT do reality TV shows like “Survivor” and “America’s Next Top Model” have in common with an insurgent method of stimulating useful innovations around the world?

It may be hard to believe that watching Tyra Banks drive aspiring models to the breaking point can provide insight into how to accelerate technological change.

Well, pinch yourself.

Popular reality shows indeed provide a way to understand the logic behind a new wave of contests in technological innovation. Both types are driven by head-to-head competition among unknowns. And the winner takes all — and is celebrated in the process.

A research agency for the government is using the model to spawn a new generation of driverless cars. Google is sponsoring a $20-million-grand-prize race to the moon and back for commercially feasible spacecraft.

And this week, the newest contest — for a drivable, affordable car that gets 100 miles a gallon — will be formally started at the New York International Auto Show. Sponsored by the X Prize Foundation, which is also running the lunar contest, the car contest is really two in one. In 2010, there will be a winner in the “city” category, which permits three-wheelers, and another in a category for four-wheel, four-seat cars.

“Human beings do some of our best work under the pressure of competition,” says Peter H. Diamandis, chairman of the X Prize Foundation, based in Santa Monica, Calif. “Cooperation is wonderful, but it doesn’t lend to breakthroughs or true innovations.”

The usual way that companies — and sometimes even government agencies — spawn advances is to employ staff members or contractors to create them. The market then rewards the winning products. The problem, however, is that the market sometimes delivers just incremental improvements, especially in areas of energy, transportation and health. Breakthroughs are imagined, but not mass-produced.

Contests, which come with a deadline, aim to create a sense of urgency, conjuring up a “race” mind-set that harks back to the cold war. After World War II, competition between the United States and the Soviet Union fostered races in space and weapons, for instance. In 1927, Charles Lindbergh made aviation history winning a $25,000 prize for being the first pilot to fly nonstop between New York and Paris.

Why have contests proliferated in recent years? “Tycoons have come into it,” says Stewart Brand, president of the Long Now Foundation, which aims to raise awareness on solving long-term technological problems. The X-Prizes, for instance, are funded by such wealthy people as Elon Musk, a co-founder of PayPal, and Stewart Blusson, who made a fortune in diamonds.

The sponsor rewards only the winner. The contestants invest their own money, thus expanding the pool of capital devoted to the field. Taking a page from the playbook of professional sports, contestants can often attract sponsorships from those who want to benefit from publicity generated by the competition — publicity that flows even to the losing contestants.

“The recognition given a prize is significant,” not merely vanity, “because it can set fire to people’s imaginations,” says Tapio Alvesalo, secretary general of the Millennium Technology Prize Foundation in Finland; that prize was first awarded in 2004. (The prize, which goes to a creator of a breakthrough innovation, pays about $1.5 million. In 2006, Shuji Nakamura won for inventing blue, green and white light-emitting diodes; finalists for the next award will be announced in April.)

Because publicity attracts more contestants, hyping prizes seems inevitable. On its Web site, the X Prize Foundation declares that it supports “the most radical approach to innovation yet.”

Skeptics say that prizes often merely confirm what has already been done in the lab — and that too often they shower attention on the contest’s founders. Look at all the free advertising Google receives for its role in the moon-travel prize, for instance.

“Creating useful innovations ought to be self-rewarding,” says Robert Friedel, a historian of technology at the University of Maryland. “If you need a prize, then maybe it’s not an invention worth pursuing.”

Although the contests have flaws, they bring innovators into the open. That can inspire young inventors — and tip off venture capitalists to the next big thing. Indeed, V.C.’s watch these contests to get leads on whom to fund.

“These contests and prizes become a quality-control mechanism,” says Yogen Dalal, a managing director of the Mayfield Fund, a venture capital firm in Menlo Park, Calif. “Often the winners — and losers — don’t have a fundable plan, but they’ve done enough to entice a V.C. to help them.”

To be sure, the devil is in the details. The creation of a great contest echoes the lesson of the Goldilocks story: make the goal not too difficult, but not too easy, either.

“We have to find the intersection of audacity and achievability,” Mr. Diamandis says.

In the case of the car competition, contestants must enter vehicles that are safe to drive and affordable to build, through means defined by a dense set of rules. The guidelines run 37 pages.

As more innovation contests are introduced, the more obvious goals may already be met. For instance, there is an all-electric car made by Tesla Motors of San Carlos, Calif. — going into production Monday — that promises to achieve more than 100 miles to the gallon. But the Tesla car is only a two-seater.

The complexities of creating the auto prize illustrate a wider problem of how to come up with ever more novel tests of human ingenuity over time. Mr. Brand of the Long Now Foundation predicts that contests will soon pursue “things we truly think of as impossible.”

Mr. Brand’s wish list includes machines that defy gravity or that allow us to read the minds of other people.

Hey, Tyra Banks, are you available for an afternoon of Vulcan mind-

meld?

G. Pascal Zachary teaches journalism at Stanford and writes about technology and economic development. E-mail: gzach@nytimes.com.