Prize for Product - Is it a fair compromise?

With a growing list of problems afflicting the human race (and the environment), innovators and world leaders approaching solutions to these problems has become time-sensitive now more than ever. With the clock ticking and their patience running thinner than their ever receding hairline, world leaders are now looking towards problem solving through a radically disruptive approach. Providing prizes to ideas that will change the world seems like the largest competition that has not been televised. Let us try to break this down to a level that sounds absurdly simple. We are, in essence, trying to solve problems that affect the world's population like - How to minimize obesity? or, How to cut short travel time from one place to another in the most seamless and least customer-disruptive way? These are problems that exist worldwide and pose a great threat to the future of our species if left unattended. So, the absurdity stems from the lack of universal awareness of the idea of incentivizing innovators to solve these problems, with the promise of money.

Since time immemorial, man has always needed an incentive to get his bottom of the couch - whether it be something as simple as the promise of a warm meal during the days of early man, or to the topic at hand - which happens to be the single strongest determinant of waking up in this day and age - the allure of money. We tend to underestimate the power the holy green paper possesses over us, as we float towards it much like Scooby-Doo did with cookies. So offering a cash prize to come up with an innovative idea for problem solving seems like a fool-proof, perfectly noble concept. Unfortunately, being the greedy, power-hungry creatures that we are, for all our wisdom and knowledge gained over the years, we cannot see a limit for contentment. No doubt, providing an open platform to innovate not only attracts opinions from a plethora of diverse fields, but also generates employment. But, such a platform is not independent of cut-throat competition that doesn't take too long to submerge the original intention of having the platform in the first place.

With the original intention being lost in translation, this venture will cease to exist as a socially noble cause, but will give birth to a self-sustainable profit based model that defies the whole definition of social innovation. If there is a way of monitoring the motives of the participants of these world challenges to ensure they're not just 'in it to win it' then it can, perhaps survive and possibly thrive. Who knows, if this happens, it will surely go down in history as a transformation for the ages.