By Vivek Wadhwa
Vice President of Academics and Innovation, Singularity University.

There is great concern about China's real-estate and infrastructure bubbles. But these are just short-term challenges that China may be able to spend its way out of. The real threat to China's economy is bigger and longer term: its manufacturing bubble.

By offering subsidies, cheap labor, and lax regulations and rigging its currency, China was able to seduce American companies to relocate their manufacturing operations there. Millions of American jobs moved to China, and manufacturing became the underpinning of China's growth and prosperity. But rising labor costs, concerns over government-sponsored I.P. theft, and production time lags are already causing companies such as Dow Chemicals, Caterpillar, GE, and Ford to start moving some manufacturing back to the U.S. from China. Google recently announced that its Nexus Q streaming media player would be made in the U.S., and this put pressure on Apple to start following suit.

But rising costs and political pressure aren't what's going to rapidly change the equation. The disruption will come from a set of technologies that are advancing at exponential rates and converging.

These technologies include robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), 3D printing, and nanotechnology. These have been moving slowly so far, but are now beginning to advance exponentially just as computing does.  Witness how computing has advanced to the point at which the smart phones we carry in our pockets have more processing power than the super computers of the '60s--and how the Internet, which also has its origins in the '60s, went on an exponential growth path about 15 years ago and rapidly changed the way we work, shop, and communicate.  That's what lies ahead for these new technologies.

The robots of today aren't the Androids or Cylons that we used to see in science-fiction movies, but specialized electro-mechanical devices that are controlled by software and remote controls. As computers become more powerful, so do the abilities of these devices. Robots are now capable of performing surgery, milking cows, doing military reconnaissance and combat, and flying fighter jets. And DIY'ers are lending a helping hand. There are dozens of startups, such as Willow Garage, iRobot, and 9^th Sense, selling robot-development kits for university students and open-source communities. They are creating ever more-sophisticated robots and new applications for these. Watch this video of the autonomous flying robots that University of Pennsylvania professor Vijay Kumar created with his students, for example.

The factory assembly that the Chinese are performing is child's play for the next generation of robots--which will soon become cheaper than human labor. Indeed, one of China's largest manufacturers, Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group, announced last August that it plans to install one million robots within three years to do the work that its workers in China presently do. It found Chinese labor to be too expensive and demanding. The world's most advanced car, the Tesla Roadster, is also being manufactured in Silicon Valley, which is one of the most expensive places in the country. Tesla can afford this because it is using robots to do the assembly.

Then there is artificial intelligence (AI)--software that makes computers do things that, if humans did them, we would call intelligent. We left AI for dead after the hype it created in the '80s, but it is alive and kicking--and advancing rapidly. It is powering all sorts of technologies. This is the technology that IBM's Deep Blue computer used in beating chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997and that enabled IBM's Watson to beat TV-show Jeopardy champions in 2011. AI is making it possible to develop self-driving cars, voice-recognition systems such as Apple's Siri, and the face-recognition software Facebook recently acquired. AI technologies are also finding their way into manufacturing and will allow us to design our own products at home with the aid of AI-powered design assistants.

How will we turn these designs into products? By "printing" them at home or at modern-day Kinko's: shared public manufacturing facilities such as TechShop, a membership-based manufacturing workshop, using new manufacturing technologies that are now on the horizon.

A type of manufacturing called "additive manufacturing" is making it possible to cost-effectively "print" products.  In conventional manufacturing, parts are produced by humans using power-driven machine tools, such as saws, lathes, milling machines, and drill presses, to physically remove material to obtain the shape desired. This is a cumbersome process that becomes more difficult and time-consuming with increasing complexity. In other words, the more complex the product you want to create, the more labor is required and the greater the effort.

In additive manufacturing, parts are produced by melting successive layers of materials based on 3D models--adding materials rather than subtracting them. The "3D printers" that produce these use powered metal, droplets of plastic, and other materials--much like the toner cartridges that go into laser printers.  This allows the creation of objects without any sort of tools or fixtures. The process doesn't produce any waste material, and there is no additional cost for complexity. Just as, in using laser printers, a page filled with graphics doesn't cost much more than one with text, in using a 3D printer, we can print sophisticated 3D structures for about the cost of a brick.

3D printers can already create physical mechanical devices, medical implants, jewelry, and even clothing. The cheapest 3D printers, which print rudimentary objects, currently sell for between $500 and $1000. Soon, we will have printers for this price that can print toys and household goods. By the end of this decade, we will see 3D printers doing the small-scale production of previously labor-intensive crafts and goods. It is entirely conceivable that in the next decade we start 3D-printing buildings and electronics.

In the next decade, we will see further advances. Engineers and scientists are today developing new types of materials, such as carbon nanotubes, ceramic-matrix nanocomposites, and new carbon fibers. These new materials make it possible to create products that are stronger, lighter, more energy-efficient, and more durable than existing manufactured goods. A new field--molecular manufacturing--will take this one step further and make it possible to program molecules inexpensively, with atomic precision. The materials we use for manufacturing and techniques for production will be nothing like the assembly-based processes that exist in China--and the U.S.--today.

Even if the Chinese automate their factories with AI-powered robots and manufacture 3D printers, it will no longer make sense to ship raw materials all the way to China to have them assembled into finished products and shipped back to the U.S. Manufacturing will once again become a local industry with products being manufactured near raw materials or markets.

So China has many reasons to worry, and manufacturing will undoubtedly return to the U.S.--if not in this decade then early in the next. But the same jobs that left the U.S. won't come back: they won't exist.  What will the new jobs be? We can only guess. Autodesk CEO Carl Bass says that just as we have created new, higher-paying jobs in every other industrial transition, we will create a new set of industries and professions in this one. Look at the new types of jobs and multi-billion dollar businesses that the Internet and mobile industries created--these came out of nowhere and changed our lives, Bass says.

Carl Bass is one of the leading authorities on 3D printing and digital manufacturing, and I share his optimism that we will create an era of abundance.  But I worry if we will create the new jobs fast enough and distribute the prosperity. Carl and I discussed this at Singularity University a few months ago. And I also discussed China manufacturing with The Economist China bureau chief, Vijay Vaitheeswaran. You can find these videos below.

This material published courtesy of Singularity University.

By Dr. Tom Perls (pictured) and Grant Campany
Dr. Perls is Director, New England Centenarian Study and Associate Professor of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. Grant Campany is Senior Director of the Archon Genomics X PRIZE presented by Express Scripts.

If you knew you were going to live to celebrate your 100th birthday, would you approach your everyday life differently? Would you change your exercise, diet, career and finances? Historically, the odds of achieving this chronological milestone were against you, but your luck may be changing. We are on the eve of significant technological breakthroughs with the potential to redefine not only the average life span but also the practice of medicine.

Why Centenarians?

Average life expectancy in most industrialized countries is now a remarkable 81 years. In 1900 it was about 45 years and in 1960 it was about 60 years. Clean water, ample food supplies, safe working conditions and major medical breakthroughs like antibiotics, vaccines, modern-day obstetrics, cardiac care and surgery continue to advance and enhance our lives.

Our "average" DNA, healthy diet, lifestyle and exercise habits, combined with medical advances, can result in a remarkable life expectancy - nearly 30 years beyond the age of 60, leading fully functional and independent lives. But how is it that some people live to 100 or even 110 years?

Decoding the Secrets of Centenarians

The New England Centenarian Study (NECS), led by Tom Perls, recently published findings from the study of several different groups of centenarians demonstrating that there is a very strong genetic influence to exceptional longevity, particularly for those living to 107 years or older. NECS research also revealed that these super agers possess "protective genes," which markedly increase their resistance to age-related diseases like Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, stroke and cancer, even at advanced ages well beyond 100 years.
We feel strongly that by studying centenarians we can begin to understand the underlying genetics of longevity. This research may offer tremendous insights, improving the quality of life for everyone.

We All Win From This X PRIZE

In order to identify and study these protective genes, we need the ability to quickly, accurately and affordably sequence the entire DNA strand, which is called the whole human genome.

This is where the Archon Genomics X PRIZE presented by Express Scripts comes in, with a $10 million incentivized competition designed to propel whole human genome technology forward, creating a faster, much less expensive and much more accurate method of sequencing.

Next year, the competition will give teams only 30 days to sequence 100 whole human genomes of vital centenarians, with an accuracy of 99.9999 percent and costing no more than $1,000 per genome. And today, we publicly announced the official entry by Ion Torrent. We are very excited about Ion Torrent's entry and encourage other companies to participate in this groundbreaking competition.

The 100 vital centenarians who are generously donating their DNA for this competition will be forever known as the Express Scripts 100 Over 100. These "genomic pioneers'" rare DNA will give researchers a gold mine of genetic information.

In order to increase the scientific utility of this Prize, we are attempting to recruit 100 ethnically diverse centenarians from around the world and wherever possible, super centenarians - those who live to 110 and beyond. The DNA provided by the Express Scripts 100 Over 100 is a key component of the $10 million Archon Genomics X PRIZE presented by Express Scripts.

How Super is 115 Years Old?

Besse Cooper, at 115 years of age, is known as a super centenarian. She is the eldest of the Express Scripts 100 Over 100 genomic pioneers and currently the oldest living person in the world according to Guinness World Records. Her DNA, along with 99 other centenarians, will be sequenced by every team competing in the Archon Genomics X PRIZE presented by Express Scripts in September 2013. Once the competition ends, the resulting genomic data will be provided freely, via the National Institutes of Health, to researchers around the world, thus creating one of the most robust sets of genomic data ever assembled.

Studying Health to Unlock the Mysteries of Disease

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) budgeted $32 billion in 2012 to support work by more than 325,000 scientists affiliated with approximately 3,000 organizations. One of the key objectives of the NIH is to support technologies that can accelerate discoveries, such as next generation genomic sequencing. We believe there is tremendous value in unlocking our understanding of the power of "protective variants." Giving researchers the first set of highly accurate genomes of centenarians is an opportunity to unlock the secrets these centenarians hold in their DNA, which protects them from disease and enables living exceptionally well to the century mark and beyond. Research, medical breakthroughs, new discoveries and therapies will be the lasting legacy to benefit humanity.

Why We Want Your DNA

The Archon Genomics X PRIZE presented by Express Scripts is looking for "genomic pioneers:" individuals born before September 5, 1913 willing to be part of the Express Scripts 100 Over 100.

They will be part of an exclusive group of individuals whose generous contribution of rare DNA will help researchers unlock the secrets of 10,000 years of life.

All we need is their DNA.
To answer the call and nominate a centenarian you know, go to:
http://genomics.xprize.org/join

Visit X PRIZE at xprize.org, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

By Robert B. McCray
Robert is President and CEO of the Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance.

What can the health care industry learn from Hollywood? Can we use the power of technology and persuasion to empower consumers to take more responsibility for their own health? Can technology and knowledge of human behavior overcome the health problems that have manifested themselves in the last century of global technical advances? Ultimately, can we enjoy in health and healthcare the benefits that we take for granted in consumer electronics where devices become cheaper and better over time?

The X PRIZE Foundation and Nokia announced the $2.25 million Nokia Sensing X CHALLENGE at the WLSA's 7th Convergence Summit in May. This follows closely on the announcement of the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. Taken together, these are among the most exciting healthcare related announcements of the past seven years and they will drive tremendous innovation in wireless health by drawing new innovators to the field. Health is "cool."

Consider the health problems facing Americans. Chronic diseases are rapidly increasing among young people (for example, diabetes and pre-diabetes rates among teenagers increased from 9% in 1999 to 23% last year) - just as the number of people over age 65 is exploding and getting sicker and the supply of doctors willing to deliver primary care services is declining. Neither the U.S. government nor most individual Americans can afford to chase the increasing costs associated with accessing traditional medical care in the traditional manner.

The developing world, which has even fewer physicians and healthcare institutions, will not follow the American hospital and physician centric approach to supporting health. Instead, they are adopting the tools of modern technology to improve access to health information and support. In this model, health is an outcome for which the individual is primarily responsible with the support of her community. Institutional support is a convenience, but access to health care paid for by someone else is not a social "right."

Is this ideal? Not entirely. But it is the global reality and with the rich world facing severe financial, aging and chronic disease problems, our societies must return to a past in which individuals looked to themselves and their family/social networks first before scheduling an appointment with a doctor for many common ailments.

Fortunately, in a tech-enabled wireless health future, we will be equipped to take on this responsibility and we will be happier for it. As consumers we will be empowered and (re)engaged to be the primary managers of our own health. The Nokia Sensing X CHALLENGE and Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE will be key drivers of this future. They are already engaging the community of researchers, entrepreneurs, industry and the health care community to develop smart connected devices that are scalable, portable and user friendly. These devices will work for consumers and not just clinicians. They will be tools for village caregivers in Asia and Africa, and for Promotores in North America, who help the poor access knowledge, products and services to manage health and improve life.

So how does this solve key societal issues?

Empowering consumer health. People want to be self-sufficient - we desire control over our lives. The separation of consumers from medical knowledge that is delivered in a fee for service has disconnected millions of people from their own health and wellbeing. "Doctor knows best" and "there is a pill of the problem" might well describe the American approach to health care of the past 50 years. The introduction of a consumer device that, for example, informs a mother as to whether her child really needs to see a physician and if so what questions to ask will shift a good deal of control to the patient and avoid many unnecessary visits to emergency rooms and clinics.

Reengaging with ourselves. Nearly half of Americans are overweight or obese due primarily to over-eating and over-sitting. About 20% smoke cigarettes. Modern conveniences such as traditional unhealthy fast food and packaged food products have freed up time for other activities, but absent effective feedback loops we ignore the long term adverse effects of these products and end up overweight and at risk of developing diabetes and heart disease. Convenient sensors will be bundled with intelligence, devices and applications to create feedback loops that will support the creation of healthful habits to replace the destructive habits so many of us have embraced. This will keep us out of the doctor's office, thus freeing up resources for the sick who cannot care for themselves.

The disruptive power of technology. Digital technology has recreated every major sector that it has touched and this will take place in health care as well. It is already starting with medical devices and in genetics research where analog systems are being replaced with digital equipment that is cheaper, faster, more proficient and more connected. It will happen with services as well. Consider what digital technology did to the music industry. Starting with MP3 technology and file sharing services such as Napster, consumers gained direct access to all the world's recorded music and on that basis refused in massive numbers to continue buying prepackaged "albums" of 12 - 18 songs from record labels costing $12 - 15. After about five years of fighting, newly recorded music became available as 99-cent singles downloadable to iPods and other players. Consumer knowledge was empowering and reduced wasted spending.

I believe we can follow the same pathway in healthcare, although the changes will take longer and be more controlled due to the appropriate conservatism of consumers and patients, and the strong regulatory, financial, professional and political resistance to change.

At WLSA, we are dedicated to making this transition occur as quickly yet safely as possible. Millions of Americans and billions of the world's population do not have access to affordable high quality care right now. Progress will come as the result of well meaning insiders collaborating with empowered and informed consumers and institutional purchasers. Technology such as those envisioned by the Nokia Sensing X CHALLENGE and Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE will play a critical role in equipping the "revolutionaries" in this engagement.

Visit X PRIZE at xprize.org, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

STAR TREK, TRICORDER and related marks and logos are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc. Used under license.

Bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours to become expert at something, whether it's playing the guitar, charting the stars or writing software code. In his landmark book Outliers: The Story of Success, Gladwell looks at why certain people are successful and postulates that, among other things, a combination of circumstances and the ability to become expert at something produces truly exceptional people and ideas.

That's an interesting thesis on the part of Gladwell, and perhaps true in yesteryear, but in today's world of growing exponential technologies, I beg to differ.

I believe that people who will come up with creative solutions to solve the world's biggest problems -- ecological devastation, global warming, the global debt crisis and distribution of dwindling natural resources, to name a few -- will not be experts in their fields. The real disruptors will be those individuals who are not steeped in one industry of choice with those coveted 10,000 hours of experience, but instead, individuals who approach challenges with a clean lens, bringing together diverse experiences, knowledge and opportunities.

And while experts will have a part to play in solving today's looming crises where incremental evolution is needed, I believe that non-expert individuals will drive disruptive innovation. Here's why.

Myopic Thinking

Sure -- there will always be a need for experts, who will continue to drive steady incremental advancements in fields such as biotechnology, environmental sciences, or information technology. But I believe that the best ideas come from those not immersed in the details of a particular field. Experts, far too often, engage in a kind of myopic thinking. Those who are down in the weeds are likely to miss the big picture. To my mind, an expert is in danger of becoming a robot, toiling ceaselessly toward a goal but not always seeing how to connect the dots.

The human brain, or more specifically the neo-cortex, is designed to recognize patterns and draw conclusions from them. Experts are able to identify such patterns related to a specific problem relevant to their area of knowledge. But because non-experts lack that base of knowledge, they are forced to rely more on their brain's ability for abstraction, rather than specificity. This abstraction--the ability to take away or remove characteristics from something in order to reduce it to a set of essential characteristics--is what presents an opportunity for creative solutions.

Innovation and Information in Abundance

I also believe that the value of expertise is diminished in a world dominated by two trends: the accelerating pace of innovation and the ubiquity of information. Today, technology moves at such a rapid pace that it is nearly impossible to keep up. With technological advances occurring at breakneck speed, expertise is obsolete within five to 10 years. Think of all the industries turned on their heads by Internet disintermediation, whether it was book and magazine publishing, the printing industry, the recording industry or retail sales, to name a few. MySpace rose and fell from grace as the world's leading social network in less than five years and pundits already question whether the era of Facebook, with its more than 900 million active users, is over.

The digital revolution has also meant a revolution in access to information. This puts more power and knowledge into the hands of non-experts. Open-source encyclopedias such as Wikipedia and search engines such as Google and Bing, which people can tap into anytime and anywhere via computers and smart phones, put a world of knowledge at our fingertips at a lower cost than ever before. Granted, they alone don't make us experts--but they give us access to information in abundance, giving us a greater base from which to "think big."

Some of the most inspiring and innovative minds I know are such disruptors. Take Elon Musk, a fellow trustee at the X-PRIZE Foundation. The South African-born engineer and entrepreneur has never hesitated to venture into new waters where he had no industry expertise but felt he could make a difference. The former founder of PayPal is now CEO and CTO of SpaceX, a private company sending cost-effective space launch vehicles and rockets into space, and is co-founder and head of product design at Tesla Motors, where he led development of the electric vehicle Tesla Roadster.

The goal must be to expand ourselves beyond one field of focus and use our improved access to information to solve the very real and extreme economic, environmental and resource challenges we face as an interconnected, global society. I believe the time is now, before our looming crises bring us to the brink of destruction, to embolden those disruptive individuals to help innovate our way out of the significant challenges our planet faces today.

This story originally appeared in our weekly iPad magazine, Huffington, in the iTunes App store.

By Don Jones
Don is Vice President of Wireless Health, Global Strategy and Market Development at Qualcomm.

It's been exciting for me to play a role in the convergence between wireless technologies and health over the past 10 years and I see the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE competition as an impetus to accelerate innovations within the health space even more rapidly. The X PRIZE Foundation announced the Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE on stage at CES in January 2012 with our CEO, Dr. Paul Jacobs, and we already have over 200 total pre-registered teams from 27 countries.

Recently, at the Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance 7th Annual Convergence Summit, X PRIZE launched the Nokia Sensing X CHALLENGE, an exciting opportunity to push the envelope in advancing health-related sensor technologies. I'm very interested to see how Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE teams might incorporate those sensors into their solutions.

Devices offered as a service will be key in the next generation of healthcare solutions. By mashing up data from multiple sensors that span therapies and disease states, services can be created based on personal feedback, dashboards and incentives that are both relevant and unique to individual consumers. And in the case of the Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE, even make diagnoses. Globally, these challenges are bringing people together to transform the future of healthcare. I don't know about you, but I'm excited to see it emerge as reality.

STAR TREK, TRICORDER and related marks and logos are trademarks of CBS Studios, Inc. Used under license.

Visit X PRIZE at xprize.org, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

By Rob Nail
Rob is the CEO of Singularity University, a serial entrepreneur, and an angel investor who loves to surf and surf the waves of accelerating change.

Education is undergoing an incredible and exciting transformation, but I can't help but wonder if the "experts" can't see the forest for the trees. We are continuing to see roiling debates from the likes of Vivek Wadhwa and Peter Thiel over whether kids should go to college or not, administrations battling technologists over whether they need to flip the classroom, and politicians forcing us to pick sides as if there were only two options - all the while missing the extraordinary revolution taking place around us.

The education industry seems to be tracking similarly to every early stage tech industry or product with big potential - innovators are coming up with new products (check out Khan Academy, Udacity, or EdX), early adopters and investors (like Learn Capital, Apollo Group, Kapor Capital, and Education Growth Partners) enthusiastically take the initial risk, only some survive (rightfully so), and the good ones go mainstream or even viral.

Unfortunately, education is a uniquely complicated industry. Not only is there a long history of strife around spending, infrastructure, politics, (not to mention the pressures from a depressed economy) and the expectation that education is a universal right, but we also fashion ourselves as experts (don't you?) – at either what works or what doesn't work. This creates a risky and challenging environment for innovators to dive into - not the "safe to fail" environment required for creativity and experimentation. Regardless of these challenges, entrepreneurs, educators, and students cannot resist the advantages that technology brings to the table, and thus technology is finally starting to bring about the transformation in education that we have all long hoped for.

If we want to hasten the transformation of education, we should not only acknowledge that we are in the awkward early-growth stage, but fully embrace it. We should be trying out every new concept and technology and helping the education innovators evolve and iterate their products quickly.

And today, there are a lot of really cool new things to watch, try, and support – of which, here are four technology areas that are particularly exciting to me:

1.) Social networking – peer-to-peer learning platforms like Udemy, Open Study, and Instructables allow experts to strut their stuff: the best ones will rise to the top based on user ratings.

2.) Artificial Intelligence and Adaptive Learning – Platforms like IBM's Watson (the winner of 2011 Jeopardy) are demonstrating increasingly complex intelligence that will is quickly being applied to education to provide ever adaptive learning environments (check out Knewton).

3.) Sensors and Feedback Technologies – Cheaper, faster, and better sensing technologies are also going to drive innovation. There are numerous tech companies experimenting with recognizing whether a student is tuned in or tuned out through facial expression analysis. We will begin to see the work of companies like Hanson Robotics translate into educational tools in the near future.

4.) Neuroscience and Psychology – Ultimately innovation in education is striving to create the optimal learning environment. Research in the fields of cognitive neuroscience and educational psychology is rapidly bringing new insights into how we learn and retain information and how these differences between individuals can be designed into education, not ignored.

Bonus: If you aren't convinced of the enormous potential technology can play in transforming education, be sure to watch Nicholas Negroponte's One Tablet Per Child Project. Earlier this year he airdropped tablets into two illiterate remote villages in Ethiopia. These were new tablets in boxes - loaded with education apps and powered by solar panels – and no instructions whatsoever were provided. In the first two weeks of this two year experiment, over 57 of the apps were being used on a daily basis and many of the children were reciting and competing over their knowledge of the ABCs.

This material published courtesy of Singularity University.

Visit X PRIZE at xprize.org, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

We are living in extraordinary times, where technology is allowing small teams of individuals to accomplish what were once only the province of governments. Empowered by smart phones, the internet, artificial intelligence, ubiquitous networks, cloud computing, robotics and digital manufacturing, small teams are building platforms and companies that are touching the lives of billions, and solving problems once solely the domain of the public sector.

Burt Rutan and a small team of 30 engineers built a spaceship able to fly twice into space within two weeks; the winners of the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X PRIZE quadrupled the rate of cleaning up oil spills on the ocean surface; an area where a trillion dollar industry had failed to make improvements in 20 years. Three co-founders of Kickstarter built a crowd funding platform that will raise $150 million by the end of 2012, providing more funding than the National Endowment for the Arts. The two co-founders of Kiva created a global lending platform that has made more than $330 million dollars in loans to 817,000 borrowers with little or no collateral and achieved a 99 percent repayment rate.

How we solve today's problems and who solves them are both changing in a dramatic fashion and this is a very good thing. We have a lot of challenges and one of them (the topic of this blog) is job creation in America. You know the stats: Over 20 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed; More than 50 percent of our recent college and high school grads fall into this category. At the same time we have 3 million jobs that aren't being filled because applicants don't have the proper training.

Who is going to solve this problem? Government? Perhaps, but frankly, I'd also like the smartest most passionate thinkers and entrepreneurs across our great nation all competing to beat this problem into submission. I'd love to have a lot of ideas tried in parallel with the hope of some true breakthroughs.

The challenge is that the day before something is truly a breakthrough it's a crazy idea. And crazy ideas are very risky to attempt. If governments try and fail, there's a congressional investigation. If a company fails, its stock price can take a hit and executive compensation follows next. One answer to this conundrum is incentive competitions. Put up a prize with an audacious goal, have lots of teams (large and small) attempt to solve it and only pay the winner in success.

Recently, an extraordinary organization called the Robin Hood Foundation raised $19 million to develop, launch and operate a series of Robin Hood X PRIZEs to combat poverty in New York, with the hope that what we learn in New York might be replicated in cities throughout the U.S. What prizes we develop and launch is yet to be determined. The goal is to aim at the root causes of poverty. Issues like education and literacy, reducing high school and college dropout rates, job skills training, and many others.

This blog is a request to crowd-source ideas for a series of Jobs X PRIZEs. My question to you is the following: What should the competition look like? What are the rules?

A great incentive competition (what we call an X PRIZE) has rules that are clear, measurable and objective.

• In 1919 to promote aviation, Raymond Orteig offered up25,000 (now worth about5M) for the first person to fly from New York to Paris (won by Charles Lindberg). The Orteig Prize inspired nine teams to spend400,000 in their efforts and launched today's500 billion aviation industry. Any person could enter, and the only thing being measured was where they took off and where they landed.
• In 1996 to stimulate a vibrant commercial spaceflight industry, the X PRIZE announced the10 million Ansari X PRIZE offered to the first team to build a private spaceship able to launch 3 adults to 100 kilometers (62.5 miles) altitude twice in two weeks. This competition attracted 26 teams from 7 countries who spent100 million pursuing the goal. The winning spaceship, built by Burt Rutan and funded by Paul Allen, won the competition on October 4th, 2004 and lead to the creation of Virgin Galactic which is now selling seats on sub-orbital flights into space. Any non-government team could enter, and what was measured was the altitude reached, the days between flights and the number of people the ship could carry.

Given these as examples, what would your rules be for an X PRIZE intended to incentivize new ways to create, finance and find Jobs in America?

Here's a quick primer in prize creation: In designing an X PRIZE, you'll need to answer the following seven questions.

1. How much is the prize purse?
2. What's the name of your proposed prize?
3. Who can compete? Who are the teams? (Individuals, companies, high schools, church groups, anyone?)
4. What specifically (in a clear, measurable and objective fashion) does the winning team need to achieve?
5. What exactly are you measuring? How do you measure it in a way that is easy and in which results can't be falsified (i.e. no cheating!).
6. How long would the competition run for? Is the first to achieve this? Or the team that achieves the highest score in a set amount of time?
7. Can you imagine a telegenic finish that generates publicity as teams demonstrate their winning solution?

If you have ideas for the rules around a Jobs X PRIZE, we would LOVE to have you submit them here. This is a special Prize Submission form created jointly by the Huffington Post and X PRIZE to get your ideas. The best ideas may be used for a future set of Jobs X PRIZEs.

To read more from the X PRIZE Foundation on The Huffington Post, visit their blog archive here.

By Dr. Henry Tirri
Dr. Tirri is Nokia's Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. In May he helped announce the launch of the $2.25 million Nokia Sensing X CHALLENGE.

Over the years, Nokia's innovation has helped to shape the world as we know it. From the first handheld phones in the 1980s, to our PureView imaging technology launched just this year, Nokia has been at the forefront of mobile technology, enabling billions of people around the globe to become inter-connected in ever-increasing ways.

The next stage of computing innovation is taking advantage of the multitude of sensors packed into current and future handsets. Technologies such as accelerometers, touch sensitivity, light sensors, magnetometers, microphones, global positioning, and bandwidth awareness are already common on modern mobile devices, and even more types of sensors will be coming soon.

And yet, every day much of this incredible wealth of digital information about our daily lives and the world around us is going to waste.

We've only just started to explore the benefits of using this data - for example, collecting purchasing preferences, or utilizing aggregate location information to help ease traffic congestion - but there is so much more that can be done. The connectivity, intelligence, and ubiquity of the mobile computing technologies is unprecedented in human history, and we - as a company, and as a people - haven't yet begun to tap the incredible potential of that social data.

At Nokia, we are already investigating new types of sensors which could be integrated into the next generation of intelligent device, with the ultimate goal of using these advanced capabilities to improve the well-being of billions of people around the world. For example, chemical and biochemical sensors can be integrated into device surfaces, environmental sensors can be added to detect UV, humidity, temperature and gases, and cutting edge nanotechnologies can add a range of new functions, including new physical interfaces, and extended battery life.

We're incredibly excited by the potential advances in sensing technology and utilization of the huge amounts of data it will generate. This is why we're sponsoring the Nokia Sensing X CHALLENGE. We want to facilitate and expedite research in an area that we believe is incredibly important to the world at large.

Nokia is a proud practitioner of Open Innovation, from our work with industry and governments to create new technology standards, to our collaboration with universities around the world tackling problems that would be difficult or expensive to try to solve alone. But the Nokia Sensing X CHALLENGE is a unique and powerful new way of working. Incentivized competitions can bring about exciting advances in technology, having the power to not only drive huge leaps of progress in a short space of time, but one which can also help to create an entire ecosystem of innovators around the challenge itself, enabling new industries to be born.

We are truly thrilled to be launching the Nokia Sensing X CHALLENGE and look forward to the incredible work to come as a result.

Visit X PRIZE at xprize.org, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

In 2007, I joined the board of the X PRIZE Foundation, inspired by the way the group encourages people to dream big, tap into their own fearlessness and creativity, and change the world. These qualities have become even more important in the years since I joined, given our continuing national jobs crisis and the inability of our leaders in Washington to bring about the changes we so desperately need. In a world of multiple crises, sub-optimal solutions and a lack of urgency from our elected officials, the X PRIZE's mission of seeking bold answers to our biggest challenges is essential, inspiring and -- hopefully -- contagious.

So I'm delighted that, starting today, HuffPost will be featuring blog posts about the latest and most innovative X PRIZE projects. We're confident our readers will identify with X PRIZE's commitment to spurring innovation in areas ranging from space exploration and science to education and energy.

Earlier this year, X PRIZE Foundation Chairman and CEO Dr. Peter H. Diamandis co-wrote a book called Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think, offering solutions, perspective and optimism at a time when all three things are in short supply. That theme of abundance goes hand in hand with the recognition that, increasingly, startups, entrepreneurs, nonprofits and ordinary people are taking on big challenges -- often with stunning results. In an X PRIZE blog post in May, celebrating the successful SpaceX Dragon mission -- the first private craft to dock with the International Space Station -- Shell's Russ Conser wrote, "Governments no longer have to be the only ones who can do really big things on their own, and neither do large companies like my own... In the 21st century, big achievements can be pursued by startups founded by people like you."

In the coming days, we'll feature blog posts including X PRIZE Vice Chairman and President Robert K. Weiss on young inventors; Nokia's Henry Tirri and Qualcomm's Don Jones on revolutionizing digital healthcare; and X PRIZE Senior Director Grant Campany and Boston University's Tom Perls on genes, health, and longevity.

In Abundance, Diamandis and co-author Steven Kotler write, "The net is allowing us to turn ourselves into a giant, collective meta-intelligence." By showcasing some of X PRIZE's boldest new ideas -- and inviting you to join the conversation -- we hope to help prove them right.

Add your voice to the conversation on Twitter: twitter.com/ariannahuff

I feel better today than I did yesterday. I still know that there are problems with the global economy, that America's unemployment is still high, and that the housing market is still unsettled. Despite these facts, I still feel better, because I've just spent the last 24 hours with Dr. Peter Diamandis while he visited Lynn University to give our 2012 commencement address.

Peter is the author of the New York Times bestseller Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think and the CEO and founder of the X PRIZE Foundation, which awards millions of dollars to small groups of people who do extraordinary things. He definitely believes in the power of positive energy. However, the main reason I feel better is that during my visit with him, and in his commencement speech to our graduates, he laid out a compelling argument that even though the world may seem to be going to hell in a handbasket, in fact it is not. In his view the world that the class of 2012 is entering is a world where abundance, which he defines as providing everyone with a life of possibility, is within our grasp.

He starts by pointing out that the world today is so different from the world of just a few years ago, thanks in part to the rapid change in technology. For example, in Africa, mobile-phone penetration is growing exponentially, from single-digit percentages in 2000 to 70 percent by next year. This means that vast numbers of people with little or no education have access to the enhanced communications, knowledge, and power a cellphone provides -- including access to the Internet. As he puts it, "A Masai warrior with a cellphone has better mobile-phone capabilities than the president did 25 years ago." And as he told our students, the smartphones they were carrying to graduation provide better mobile communication than world leaders had just 15 years ago.

Peter essentially believes there are three main forces at work that, when coupled with the unprecedented power of growing technologies mentioned above, provide significant, abundance-producing potential. These forces include:

1. The do-it-yourself revolution that is allowing small teams of very committed people to do things that previously only large companies or governments could do. The successful Arab Spring revolutions and cases of individuals making real change thanks to their ability to connect with billions through social media and other communications technologies are all part of this force. "You and a small team of classmates can touch 1 billion people," he told our graduates.
2. The money that is flowing into world-changing innovation as a result of wealthy technophilanthropists (for example, Bill Gates and his mission to wipe out malaria) who are helping solve global issues such as unclean water, lack of energy, etc.
3. The rise of the poorest of the poor. The "bottom billion" are "plugging into the global economy" and are ready to become what he calls "the rising billion." According to Peter, "the Internet, microfinance, and wireless technology" have the potential "to transform the poorest of the poor into an emerging market force."

As he said, each of these three forces is amazingly powerful on its own. But together, with the growing potential of technologies, "the unimaginable becomes the now actually possible."

During our time together, we also talked about a topic important to both of us: innovation. If there is one thing that the students I have met share in common, it's their desire to make a difference in their world. This is good because, according to Peter, this desire is one of the key motivators that drive innovation.

For example, Peter wanted to make spaceflight more possible for more people. He said it took him 10 years to get the first X PRIZE for spaceflight started. But by the time it was awarded in 2004, 26 teams in seven countries raced to do something that experts (whom Peter defines as "people who will tell you exactly how something can't be done") said just couldn't be done by private firms: build and launch a spacecraft capable of carrying three people to 100 kilometers above the Earth, twice within two weeks. The $10-million X PRIZE launched an entirely new industry, pushed technological innovation. and helped make it possible for more people to experience spaceflight. This all started with Peter's desire to make a difference.

There are countless other examples of people, some famous and some whose names you've never heard, who are attacking the world's greatest challenges with new possibilities fueled by ever-improving technologies, in areas as diverse as food, water, energy, health care, and education. Although the challenges they take on may differ, all their efforts will help fulfill the promise of abundance for all people on the planet during the lifetime of our 2012 graduates.

This is the knowledge Peter Diamandis left me with, and this is why I feel better today than I did yesterday.

Convinced that cash prizes stimulate innovation, the CEO of one Bellevue, Wash.-based technology firm is giving $100,000 to employees with great ideas.

Naveen Jain is the CEO of Intelius, which provides online information about people to businesses. In addition, he sits on the board of the X Prize Foundation, a non-profit group that organizes public competitions with multi-million dollar prizes aimed at advancing technology.

The success of the X Prize recently prompted Jain to bring innovation-based contests to his own business. Last year, Intelius held its first-annual "iPrize," a company-wide competition that invites staff to submit ideas for cost-saving measures and new products.

A panel of Intelius executives judges the ideas, which can be submitted by teams of up to 10 employees. First place receives a check from Intelius for $50,000, second place gets $20,000, third place wins $10,000 and ten "finalists" are each awarded $2,000.

Now in its second year, the number of staff submissions for the iPrize has nearly doubled, Intelius executives told The Huffington Post. The company estimates that nearly half its 170 employees have entered an idea into the annual competition.

Winning ideas last year included software for Intelius salespeople and a consumer-facing mobile app that allows users to stake their online reputations on product recommendations.

Whether Intelius' iPrize generates ideas that ultimately boost its bottom line remains to be seen, but there's no question that contests aimed at spurring innovation and fostering entrepreneurship within corporations are en vogue, especially as nimble startups nip at their heels.

Recent research by the consulting firm McKinsey found that while today's best-known prizes, such as the Nobel Prize or the Pulitzer, are based on past achievement, an increasing share of prizes look to the future.

Before 1991, 97 percent of prize money was offered for past achievements, according to the report. However, since then, 78 percent of new prize capital has been offered for the future solutions of problems.

Does your company hold firm-wide competitions to generate new ideas and inspire staff?

You spend your evenings scouring industry journals and websites and flatter yourself with the satisfaction of knowing your market inside and out. You keynote regularly at trade shows and are the first to buy a table at large industry conferences. If there's a competitor in the wings, waiting to chew off some of your business, you'll be ready to flatten them -- right?

Not so fast. The days of tracking competition by immersing yourself in your own industry are gone. These days, the competition can come from anywhere -- most likely from outside your industry -- and can blindside you before you're even aware it exists. We live in transformative times, and we can thank exponentially powerful technology for this development. It makes it possible for highly innovative companies, like software and synthetic biology businesses, to emerge against traditional leaders in fields as diverse as healthcare, education, manufacturing and energy.

The lesson for executives: Your competition is not who you think it is. If you persist in ignoring what's happening beyond the narrow confines of your industry, your company could end up on the endangered species list.

Several months ago, I chaired a panel discussion of CEOs who were speaking on the future of their respective industries. I brought up 3-D printing, a technology that allows for the creation of product parts in record time, thereby revolutionizing manufacturing. I asked my fellow panelists how this disruptive development would change their businesses.

The awkward pause told me all I needed to know. I have seen this same response too often. Most business leaders aren't taking a far, wide and deep enough view of the competitive landscape. In this case, 3-D printing, which collapses product development and manufacturing timeframes, has become a disruptive technology.

Another example of competition coming from unexpected places is in the pharmaceutical industry. Who in the pharmaceutical business would have guessed that their competition would come from a company like Google? Traditionally, companies that conduct healthcare or medical research have considered biotech firms as their competition. However, software companies, not biotech businesses, are the ones that keep pharma executives awake at night. Healthcare research has become an information-gathering challenge, and this is where software companies -- and more specifically, companies with expertise in managing large databases of information -- have an advantage.

Groupon, the online couponing website, is another company that has seemingly come from nowhere to clobber a more traditional industry. In this case, the Yellow Pages and other phone directories have enjoyed a leadership position since the dawn of the telephone.

In contrast to paging through a dense book of offers, Groupon conveniently sends real-time discounts directly to your email inbox. Members are free to decide what services they want to use and when -- at zero delivery cost. Yellow Pages companies, whose coupons and special offers turn up in a big fat book that hits your doorstep a few times a year, could never have imagined that a startup like Groupon and a high-tech company like Google might herald their downfall.

If your leisure time is spent reading trade journals and attending industry conferences, you may have a woefully incomplete picture of your competitive future. You may not see the stealth innovators who are quietly harnessing technologies to displace your business.

When the X Prize Foundation (where I serve as chairman of the education and global development) ran a competition last year to develop street-ready vehicles that would average more than 100 miles on a gallon of gas, not one of the prize finalists came from the traditional auto industry. A group of Philadelphia high-school students came close to the finals, with a modified Ford Focus using lithium-ion batteries. The lesson: don't underestimate who competitors are and where they'll come from, and don't get too comfortable about your ability to out-innovate your traditional competitors.

Here are three steps to take to break out of the executive comfort zone:

1) Expand the circle of events you attend, or experts you consult, far outside your market space. When you listen to the buzz only within your industry, you tend to hear about the same businesses and innovations over and over again. You're not stretching your worldview by staying in the industry box.

2) Go to visionary events that look at innovation from many different angles, and don't restrict the discussion to a specific industry. The venues I like are the Exponential Technologies Executive Program at Singularity University (I sit on SU's board), which is dedicated to teaching executives about exponentially growing technology; The Economist's Ideas Economy: Innovation conference; the WIRED Disruptive by Design conference; and the TED events.

3) Expose yourself to new concepts and, when you do, think hard about how you can make them work for you. Could these innovations apply to your business and make it better, or can you envision how an upstart company could use them against you?

Opening your mind to new ideas for evolving your business makes you realize that you are more vulnerable to competition than you think. This realization will propel you to embrace game-changing business concepts that may not have occurred to you a decade ago. In short: stay curious, stay open-minded and stay alert. And remember that your competitors may be hiding in plain sight.

The official private race to the moon is on! Recently, my colleagues at the X PRIZE Foundation announced the official roster of 29 registered teams competing for the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE. Included in this new announcement are eight teams not previously known to the public, including teams based in Israel, Brazil, Hungary, Canada, Chile, India, and the U.S.

When we first began this competition, we hoped we would find a dozen teams with the talent and ambition to take on the monumental task of sending a robot to the moon that travels 500 meters and transmits video, images, and data back to the Earth; to end up with nearly 30 is truly spectacular. The roster of teams also reflects this new era of exploration's diverse and participatory nature, as it includes a huge variety of groups ranging from non-profits to university consortia to billion dollar businesses representing 17 nations on four continents.

This competition is more real than ever. Along with the competition teams, our friends at Google, and great partner organizations like LEGO and FIRST Robotics, we are already inspiring the next generation of scientists, engineers, and explorers around the world, and our momentum will only increase from here. Our teams have already signed deals with major customers like NASA, which effectively doubled the size of the prize by offering $30 million in data purchase contracts. Teams have built prototypes and purchased rides on rockets. The moon is almost within our grasp already.

Nearly 50 years ago, President Kennedy told the world that "we chose to go to the moon... not because it is easy, but because it is hard." It most certainly is hard -- but that's not the only reason we go there. We go there because exploring the moon can tell us an immense amount about our solar system and our home planet; we go there because, in the future, the moon will be a source of vital resources to help us support a higher quality of life for a burgeoning population; we go there because the moon is the logical stepping stone from which we can move out into the cosmos.

The reasons why we go the moon are clear; now, these teams will be showing us the way to get there affordably. I hope that you'll join us in wishing all of these teams good luck!

For those who have followed the Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE, today has been a long time coming.  Our vision from the start was to reinvent the paradigm for cars the public can drive. We wanted to ensure that these cars were fast, affordable, safe and achieved more than 100 MPGe (miles per gallon equivalent) -- a new way to directly compare the efficiency of gasoline to electric and other alternative fueled vehicles.  This adventure began in early 2006, when we first developed the concept for this Incentive Prize.  It was officially announced in March 2008, with Progressive Insurance as the competition's title sponsor.  More than 130 vehicles from around the world registered to participate.  This past summer, we tested the finalist at Michigan International Speedway, all competing for a $10 million purse and one shared goal: to develop viable and super, fuel-efficient vehicles that meet or exceed 100 MPGe.

We spent this morning in the nation's capital at The Historical Society of Washington, D.C. to announce the three winning vehicles among others that will impact our future driving experience.  Joining us on stage were Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi; the President's Science Advisor, Dr. John Holdren; Senator Mark R. Warner; Representative Edward Markey; Deputy Secretary of Energy, Daniel Poneman; and of course, Progressive Insurance CEO Glenn Renwick.  While our event backdrop was all about history, we came together to celebrate the future and the innovations of companies that have advanced their own automotive technologies because of their role in this competition.

We awarded $5 million to the competition's Mainstream Class (seats four) category winner and $2.5 million each to the two Alternative Class (seats two) winners, one with tandem seating and one with traditional side-by-side seating.

• Edison2 LLC, based in Charlottesville, Va., won the $5 million mainstream class with its Very Light Car.  This forward-looking, truly aerodynamic vehicle weighs less than 750 pounds and boasts a drag coefficient that is half of what is considered the best today.  In the competition, the Very Light Car achieved just more than 100 MPGe and passed all safety and emissions criteria- made even more remarkable with the knowledge that the car runs on E85 ethanol.




• Li-ion Motors, based in Mooresville, N.C., won the $2.5 million alternative side-by-side class with its Wave II vehicle.  This battery electric urban car was built on a lightweight aluminum chassis and includes a highly efficient battery package and aerodynamic features that enabled it to achieve 187 MPGe in on-track testing.




• X-Tracer, based in Uster, Switzerland, won the $2.5 million alternative tandem class with its E-Tracer 7009 vehicle.  The E-Tracer features two stabilizer wheels that automatically drop at low speeds or during sharp turns.  It includes room for two in-line passengers and weekend baggage, and held the record high for efficiency in the competition, coming in at 197 MPGe.



While some may consider the competition over, for the winning teams the journey has just begun. Indeed, they will immediately begin leveraging their winning status, prize money and connections made over the course of the competition to catapult their vehicle into the consumer market.  It will not be easy, but I know these teams can, and will, make it happen.  Just like Burt Rutan and Paul Allen were able to take their winning vehicle, SpaceShipOne, from the Ansari X PRIZE and move it forward into commercialization through a $250 million commitment from Sir Richard Branson to create Virgin Galactic, so too, do we wish these winning teams great success in their next steps towards commercialization.


We've seen a shift in the market since we first launched this competition, and a greater awareness by the American people to think more seriously about the actions we take, and how they affect our environment.  We have also seen a rise in acceptance of the MPGe model used in our competition, a new benchmark in measuring fuel economy. MPGe has the advantage of public familiarity. That is why our partner, Consumer Reports, has joined us in championing MPGe as a robust, transparent and fuel neutral standard that consumers can use to make apples-to-apples comparisons of such next-generation vehicles to the cars they drive today.


Edison2, X-Tracer and Li-ion Motors will have the greatest impact.  Their vehicles are set to revolutionize fuel efficiency, as well as the auto industry, because the beauty of this X PRIZE is not just the cars - it is also the technology.


Working together, the X PRIZE Foundation and Progressive Insurance have strived to change the paradigm of "mainstream" vehicles by providing a global platform focused on engine efficiency, increased vehicle power, acceleration, safety and increased fuel economy. The innovative technologies brought forth in this competition were astounding and further proved the purpose behind prize competitions -- to make the impossible possible.


We were not looking for incremental changes or long-term strategies.  The competition's structure demanded breakthrough thinking that would literally disrupt the industry and produce an accelerated wave to push it ahead in leaps and bounds.  To quote Bob Marley, "it takes a revolution to make a solution."


Congratulations to the winners of the Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE and to all the participating teams.  Even those teams who achieved 80 or 90 MPGe will also make a huge impact in the marketplace.  Personally, I'm looking forward to driving these vehicles in the near future and hope you will as well!