Autodesk's own Jonathan Knowles (Autodesk bio, Twitter) was once again a member of the team that won first place at XPRIZE Visioneering competition. What is XPRIZE Visioneering? you ask. I blogged about this two years ago in Autodesk participates in XPRIZE Visioneering when Jonathan was on the winning team then too.
Each year, corporate leaders, philanthropists, academics, and heads of innovation gather for a multi-day Visioneering workshop to brainstorm, debate, and prioritize which of the world's Grand Challenges might be solved through an incentivized prize competition. This year's Visioneering took place May 7-8 in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, where attendees competed with one another to design and pitch innovative, incentivized prize concepts across a variety of Grand Challenge areas. (The $10M Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE was one such past winner that emerged from a Visioneering workshop.)
The team consisted of:
- Christina Weiss-Lurie — Oscar-winning documentary film maker and President/owner of the Philadelphia Eagles NFL team
- Jessica Banks — Founder and CEO of Rock Paper Robot
- Jonathan Knowles — Autodesk Explorer and Director of Strategic Initiatives
- Vishen Lakhiani — founder and CEO of Mindvalley
The team garnered first place honors for their Human Dignity Prize concept: inexpensive, deployable in a day, safe/secure homes with access to water, sanitation, and off-the-grid power, for displaced families that can be integrated to create more than just shelters and provide the development of communities created by those who live in them.
There are 80 million forcefully displaced people around the world today. Some are refugees displaced because of war. Others, because of economic and natural disasters — like the recent earthquake in Nepal. Every day 32,000 more people are displaced. The average displaced family size is 7, and they are on average in the camps for 17 years. Through no fault of their own, they are completely dependent, much like a prison. The team's guiding principle was that even though they can't go home, they can be at home.
Fostering philanthropy through competition is alive in the lab.