Incentives Sparking Innovation

From the Orteig Prize to recent X Prize-- you almost have to stand in awe as you see what "regular" people can create when someone offers some incentive to take a risk.

While there have been innovations like that created by the winners of the X Prize, pictured to the right, it as also been stated that these single innovations are meant to spark much larger change. As our reading focused on the "larger change(s)" that we speak of such as: Masdar City--we see just how far innovation can go. In what we can call an environmental utopia, Masdar City, is a tree-huggers environmentally friendly person's dream.

No one can deny the innovativeness of this proposed city and it led me to stumble on another miraculous mission, also being born in the desert regions of our planet. Tree-hugger continuously posts radical moves in the mission to become more environmentally friendly. Below is a video that shows one of the most radical attempts to date. Though this is only in the planning phases, the thought of powering our world using SAND, yes SAND!, is a pretty amazing thought.

The Sahara Solar Breeder Project is committed to finding a way to using the Sahara Desert as an energy source. The plan is to use sand and solar energy to provide massive amounts of energy production by 2050 [around the time when those oil wells will start to run dry]. This plan is far fetched but is being backed by great minds in Japan and Algeria. Please take a few minutes to watch the video as my luddite attempts to explain will only cause confusion.

It has been stated that $2 million will be put up by universities towards research but let's hope that somebody like Thomas Vander Ark will find interest in this endeavor. It seems that $2 million is all the money on the table for an innovation that could possibly change the world, so is Vander Ark right to say that Prize philanthropy could fill the gap? I ask, will a prize take this from tree-hugger talk to a real race to see this come to fruition?