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Message Engaging Expert Networks with Open Innovation For the past five years, the X PRIZE Foundation has convened a two-day Visioneering workshop to ask its network of advisers, including top CEOs, entertainment executives, scientists and philanthropists, the same question: What global challenge should innovation leaders work to solve right now? After a challenge topic is chosen, the foundation designs an X PRIZE competition in which international teams race to craft the best solution—and vie for a cash prize. By making the R&D process fast-paced, public, and lucrative, the contest has enabled new discoveries in aerospace (SpaceShipOne), automotive (cars that get 100 MPGe of gasoline), and other industries. In 2011, the X PRIZE Foundation sought to change the selection process. Previously, the organization vetted the list of potential challenges that its advisers considered during the Visioneering workshop. This time around, the X PRIZE Foundation asked its advisers to help set the agenda by asking them which global challenges they wanted to tackle next. They did so using a private, invitation-only online forum—a collaborative software platform set up by OpenIDEO—that allowed advisers to share potential prize concepts, propose challenge questions, and discuss topics of interest. Given the exclusivity of the Visioneering event and the X PRIZE Foundation’s commitment to delivering high-touch service, the OpenIDEO team worked closely with the Foundation throughout the challenge to provide rapid support and troubleshooting to its network of luminaries. The four-week OpenIDEO forum elicited more than 60 potential challenges to be considered during the 2011 Visioneering workshop, held April 16 and 17 in Los Angeles. The advisers narrowed those down to eight areas of focus that will guide the X PRIZE Foundation’s competitions and work over the next year. The foundation described the event as its most successful to date, in large part because of the OpenIDEO platform’s ability to inspire innovative thinking among challenge participants. “The diversity of ideas was incredible. We spent forty-eight hours addressing Grand Challenges ranging from water, global disaster and poverty, to stems cells, bionics and re-inventing education. We were incredibly honored to have such prominent thinkers and innovators donating their time and passion to this process,” Peter H. Diamandis, the Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation. “The weekend was incredibly powerful and productive.” http://www.ideo.com/work/engaging-expert-networks-with-open-innovation