Innovation

One of the unique aspects of a prize, and particularly an X-Prize, is that it doesn't require letters after your name, specific degrees or backgrounds or so on. We simply define what it is we want solved, and award the prize to whomever is able to accomplish that.

When you put a prize out there, you legitimise the pursuit of something which is often pretty audacious. Legitimacy also brings about renewed focus and vigour on the problem at hand- it's a little like the context of a 4 minute mile… nobody thought it was possible until it was achieved.

Water is the essence of life. On Earth it's used to grow plants and within industrial processes but in space it takes on a whole new form. We can use water as a radiation shield. One cubic metre of water gives the same protection as Earth's atmosphere and magnetosphere. Water is a molecule made of hydrogen and oxygen- and that happens to be rocket fuel.

The design and collaborative power of an individual engineer or technologist is more powerful than it's ever been. The tasks themselves are getting more accessible too. Putting a robotic spacecraft out into space is becoming fairly routine.

Bubbles are driven by people piling into ideas now, that they think will make them lots and lots of money in the future. The more people that pile in, the more quickly innovation can spread... But if the capital is misallocated? then when the money meets common sense, you get a bust.

...adoption of random strategies diminishes the probability of extreme events (in this case large capital increases or great losses) but also ensures almost the same average wealth over a long time period, at variance with other technical strategies...

Crypto-currency is a means by which people can exchange property in a secure way without the use of a central institution like a bank or the Federal Reserve.

Duke Finance Professor & Co-Developer of Campbell Harvey Market Timing Model

It is the difference between an investor asking, 'so, what's your product…' and 'so, what's your idea, and what steps can we take to turn that into a product.'

Viewing entrepreneurship as experimentation allows individuals and societies to evaluate businesses and technologies in domains with greater uncertainty than otherwise possible, unlocking deep growth opportunities.

Invention has to be about the dream, there's an ingredient which you can't put in a business plan- it's intangible- but I saw it, it was there.

Guess what, it turns out that you can't make big-breakthroughs without crazy optimism and idealism! With the exception of Elon Musk, that attitude is largely missing right now.

If you don't have some failures continually, it is a signal that you have retreated into the conservative past. Most people still interpret failure as an unfortunate thing to get to success, but this isn't actually what it means.

Co-Founder of Pixar & Pioneer in Computer Graphics

People should adopt a fearlessness where they are trying new things, but then accept that by doing this- a certain percentage of things will fail. Failure is not a necessary evil, but rather- it is a positive part of on-going progress.

Co-Founder of Pixar & Pioneer in Computer Graphics

What is the value of asking the right question to prompt the right answer? It would be difficult to find a sector that design and/or design thinking cannot impact.

BMW Chief Designer; Revolutionized Automotive Design Language in 2000s

Design is the great 're-configurer' of problems for business… for example design takes an engineering solution for transmitting signals called a phone and reconfigures it into a hyper complex problem of glass and metal shapes, etc.

BMW Chief Designer; Revolutionized Automotive Design Language in 2000s

Look at something like Uber... on balance- it's still a taxi service! In the end, what they designed was a different way to connect customers and a service provider using technology, leading to a better experience for both.