Google Offers $10million Prize Fund for Ideas that will Change the World

This week, as part of their tenth birthday celebrations, Google have announce the launch of project 10^100 (ten to the 100th), an innovative scheme designed to inspire and fund the development of ideas that will help to change the world.

The internet giant has called on members of the public to share their ideas for solutions that will help as many people as possible in the global community, offering a $10 million prize pool to back the development of those chosen as winners.

When announcing the scheme live on CNN yesterday morning, Bethany Poole, Project Marketing Manager for Google, and Andy Berndt, MD of Google’s Creative Lab, were keen to stress that any idea that could be developed to benefit the global community would be considered.

"These ideas can be big or small, technology-driven or brilliantly simple -- but they need to have impact. "We know there are countless brilliant ideas that need funding and support to come to fruition."

The project’s website (http://www.project10tothe100.com/) asks entrants to classify their ideas into one of eight categories listed as Community, Opportunity, Energy, Environment, Health, Education, Shelter and Everything Else. Goals for the project such as building communities, generating clean energy, giving people opportunity and access to education, helping people lead healthier lives and promoting a sustainable global ecosystem are also suggested.

Members of the public have until 20th October to submit their ideas by completing a simple form and answering a few short questions about their idea. Entrants can also include a link to a 30 second video either demonstrating their idea in action or giving a more detailed explanation.
Entries will be accepted in 25 languages and Google have placed no limit on the number of ideas any one individual can share.

An advisory board will work with Google employees to narrow the entrants down to the top 100, with the results to be announced on 27th January, 2009. It will then be up to the public to vote for their favourites before 2nd February when the top 20 ideas will be passed on to a panel of judges to whittle down.
Source : money.co.uk