The X Prize Foundation: using prizes to solve problems

Space Ship One, the world's first privately built and operated space ship, was built to win the X Prize. Can libraries learn from this?

As I was cooking yesterday, I listened to Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize foundation, describe his project to get launch the commercial space travel industry through prizes on the Big Ideas program. Diamandis is part of a larger history of organizations providing awards to solve important problems. The most famous example of this is the longtitude prize offered by the British Admiralty in the 1700s (the story is told in entertaining detail in Dava Sobel’s book Longitude). The general idea behind prizes is that it encourages many people to solve a problem from all over and goes beyond simply recruiting the usual suspects.  The effort and money expended by applicants often far exceeds the prize money. The original focus on the X Prize foundation was focused on space travel but they are now interested in a range of problems including energy and life sciences.

This project has me thinking about applying the prize ethic to the library world. There are some prizes out there already that tend to recognize outstanding individuals but these kind of awards do not appear to have the same effects as the X Foundation. The missing ingredient is encouraging people to focus on a big, challenging problem and then go from there. So, let’s say there was a million dollar prize available to people that solved pressing library problems, what could we get solved? One challenge: how can we turn  public libraries into a Third Place? In the academic context, how can we make the process of using research databases more seamless? In a special library context, the challenge could involve something like how to we get librarians into boardrooms and executive teams? I have also been thinking a bit about library architecture and design of library spaces; are there better ways to do that? After coming up with challenges, the next step is figuring out who will fund the prize. Why should engineering and technology get all the entrepreneurial energy?