Fuel for Thought

Even the government is getting in on the act: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded $2 million in October to a team from Stanford that won its Grand Challenge by building an autonomous vehicle that successfully navigated a 132-mile course through the Nevada desert. And NASA hired Diamandis and Maryniak to help develop contests for the space agency. "We have a vision for space exploration, and embedded in that are a lot of technical challenges that are pretty tough," says Brant Sponberg, the program manager for NASA's Centennial Challenges, a series of contests to develop new technology for space. "We needed a mechanism to reach out to sources of innovation wherever they might lie."

Unlike traditional government-dominated grant giving, prizes "allow everyone and anyone to compete up to the last minute, and we at NASA don't have to be smart enough to pick the right performer," Sponberg says. During the first two $50,000 challenges, held last October, he was delighted by the diversity of entrants. "We had small companies, university students, and hobbyist-enthusiasts--the Robot Wars type. We really had the full gamut."

Sponberg also says Diamandis and Maryniak have performed a real service by bringing back the competitiveness of the early aviation days: "Peter and Gregg are the ones who really rediscovered this, and we owe them a debt of gratitude."

Diamandis, the frustrated but ever optimistic would-be astronaut, started the X Prize Foundation to meet a challenge that had stymied him for decades. Watching someone take the money home has only made him eager to give away still more. "If you are passionate about solving a problem, if you fund a prize with enough money, and you set out clear enough rules," he says, "you are literally reaching across space and time into the future and solving that problem."

Michael Prospero (mprospero@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company reporter.