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A Race for Our Future

A few years back, I came across a quote that has really stuck with me: ”You can’t incrementalize your way into the future.” With this quote in mind, I’d invite you to read this short article from Popular Mechanics discussing the new X-Prize to create an automobile that achieves 100 miles-per-gallon or more—and can be mass produced.

What I like about the contest is that it is not trying to “incrementalize” the automobile industry into the future. In other words, the sponsors of the contest are not looking for a crappy 5 or 10 mile improvement in MPG performance from the automotive industry. They are looking for a 4X improvement.

I’m optimistic that the contest will succeed and that within a decade’s time many of us will be able to purchase a safe, stylish and comfortable car that can run more than a 100 miles on a single gallon of fuel. This is because by freeing researchers, scientists, hobbyists and tinkers from the constraints and paradigms that have so far mired the automotive industry in a century of un-innovative thinking; the sponsors have provided inventors a sufficient financial incentive—in the form of a $10 million prize—to approach the issue from a completely fresh perspective.

As an analogy consider the following: If you asked a high jumper to improve his jump by 5 to 10%, he would probably focus only improving his leg strength—so he could jump higher. If, however, you told him the goal was to “jump as high as possible” and that he would be rewarded for reaching the highest level, he would llikely look at a whole new set of tools with which to achieve the goal. To keep the analogy simple, he might consider using a pole vault—an advance which would effectively double the height he could jump.

In this same way, the X Prize is providing people sufficient motivation to think differently about the issue of fuel-efficiency and the result won’t be an incremental improvement—it’ll be an exponential increase.

As Peter Diamandis, the founder of the X Prize, says at the end of this five-minute video profiling some of the leading contenders for the prize, “this is a race for our future.”

It is, indeed, and the contest offers further evidence that we won’t be incrementalizing our way into the future.

Interested in other ways that prize might impact the future? Check out these old articles:

Money makes the World Go Round

Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.

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