I’ve been noticing a recent competition tech trend in business and government lately. The first contest that caught my attention was by Netflix, a three-year contest to improve its Web site’s movie recommendation system with a payout of $1 million dollars. I can see a company like Netflix offering a contest like this for multiple reasons, number one for low risk technical improvements. Let’s think about it, if after this three year period no team can improve the current recommendation system (which is a very sophisticated algorithm taking into consideration over 100 million movie ratings) it costs Netflix nothing and they still succeed by fostering innovation in their industry and the internet era.
My next example is a $10 million dollar government competition called the L-Prize is hosted by the Deptartment of Energy. This competition is to create the next generation of light bulbs. The money will go to the company that creates a viable solid-state LED replacement for the standard 60-watt incandescent bulb.
WIth these two as recent examples it makes me think that we will be seeing competitions like this popping up with some frequency, more so on a smaller scale. I foresee small to mid-size companies replicating these competitions trying to build buzz for their brands while simutaneously fostering nearly risk-free innovation in their industries.
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