Autodesk Participates in XPRIZE Visioneering

Jonathan Knowles

At the end of April, Autodesk participated in XPRIZE Visioneering. Autodesk CTO, Jeff Kowalski and Autodesk Advisor to the CEO/CTO, Jonathan Knowles were "Visioneers." Autodesk Fellow, Tom Wujec, was one of the facilitators.

Visioneering is a process where each year, corporate leaders, philanthropists, heads of innovation and XPRIZE Trustees (“visioneers”) gather for a multi-day Visioneering meetup to brainstorm, debate, and prioritize which of the world's Grand Challenges might be solved through incentivized competition. You can learn more about XPRIZE Visioneering and winning prizes here:

Learn more.

Here are some highlights:

• There were 120 visioneers that started out as 24 teams.

• After 5 rounds of crafting prize concepts and presenting them, all 120 Visioneers voted on them, and 4 teams moved to the finals.

• Each finalist team got 90 seconds to make the final presentation to 400 people made up of business, government, and education titans.

• The top honors went to X² — Mother of All Prizes. The team included Liz Fleming, Kosta Grammatis, Jennifer Granholm, Jonathan Knowles, Henri Richard, Scott Sorokin, Lynn Tilton, and Vivek Wadhwa. Lynn Tilton generously pledged $5 million to fund the prize.

  

• The second prize was Meteor of the Mind — a prize to address Alzheimer’s Disease.

  

The basic idea behind X² — Mother of All Prizes is that our world faces a persistent gap in access to opportunities and decision-making power for women. This prize, X², enhances existing and future XPRIZEs with a financial bonus for teams who hire women into contributing roles and rewards teams with an additional bonus when the most senior executive in the team is a woman. Empowered women and girls contribute to the health and productivity of their families, communities, and countries, creating a ripple effect that benefits everyone.

If you would like to see what it was like to be there, check out this storify:

View the slideshow.

Autodesk is proud to bring our perspective to the XPRIZE Visioneering process. Our software enables our customers to imagine, design, and create a better world. The goal of XPRIZE is to make the impossible possible — something that's right up our alley.

Visioneering is alive in the lab.