New Incentive Prize Competition Leverages Open Innovation and Light-Based Technologies Trends to Transform Business — XPHOTON, the Open Innovation Challenge — a new type of economic engine designed to bring about radical business, technological and social innovation to benefit local and global communities using light-based technologies, inspire new industries and catalyse markets.
Responding to the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies (IYL 2015 light2015.org) proclaimed by the UNESCO and the growing global demand for incentive, prize-based business models to drive open innovation, the XPHOTON Challenge complements PhotonTransfer.com’s vision for Bridging the gap between science and market by facilitating many more, smaller challenges – many of them local – that are accessible to a larger number of competitors.
An XPhoton Open Innovation Challenge is a highly leveraged, incentivised prize contest that based on specific needs companies well established in their market has but had never been address to world class of scientist researchers using light based technologies.
“Prizes change what people believe is possible, the winning of challenge itself is interesting and compelling far from the monetary award” said PhotonTransfer CEO, Ernesto Barrera. “XPHOTON fast-tracks innovation and spurs the rapidly growing movement of physics and engineers— the problem solvers, misfit thinkers and crazy dreamers who are changing the world one challenge at a time. Our 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 XPHOTON Marketing director Anabel Sarandria. “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 winner.” “It is often frustrating to see important problems go unsolved due to ineffective or out-dated approaches to innovation,” said Anabel. “The XPHOTON Challenge prize model and platform leverage technology in a customisable way to scale solutions with measurable social impact.”
The key insight that much of what we do is built upon, it doesn’t have to be large or complex in order to be successful. Interested parties can sign up for XPHOTON as a creator / companies, a sponsor or a competitor. Prize creators can break down the project into smaller tasks, such as designing or building and seek different prize winners for each category.
As a result, the XPHOTON incentive prize platform will launch with challenges across industries such as Illumination & Displays, Solar Energy, Optoelectronics & Communications, Astronomy, Biomedical Optics & Medical Imaging, Laser & Light Sources and Optics & Nanotechnology. Competitors, regardless of previous accomplishments, can work to solve problems side-by-side with world-class entrepreneurs and companies.
The beauty of an incentive competition, if it’s designed correctly, is you are allowing anybody to win, to work on your problem and submit their solutions. Companies can increase their R&D capacity without additional resources; they only pay on success if the expectations are met.
The key difference between signing up to vie for a XPHOTON prize and pitching to a company or government organisation for the chance to win a contract, is that anyone can enter XPHOTON, not just those with the biggest company behind them or the most impressive resume.