BBC had a short interview with Dr. Peter Diamandis, Founder and Chairman of The XPrize Foundation and said a few things that closely reflected our thoughts and aims at GrabCAD. So we thought we'd share what was said with our 250,000 Engineers, Designers and CAD users in GrabCAD.
Most here have heard of the XPrize Foundation - their first competition drove the success of the SpaceShipOne, the first commercial spaceship. As Diamandis puts it, " we identify areas that are grand challenge where market failures exist and things are stuck and say, the first person to solve this problem, to build a private spaceship that can carry 3 adults into space, or builds a 100 mile a gallon car that achieves these goals or learned how to clean up oil spills wins the cash prize."
Sound familiar? While we haven't gotten close to running million dollar design challenges, GrabCAD and XPrize follow the same principles. Diamandis continues,
We design these competitions, we set a very clear objective goal and we open it up. We typically have teams from around the world who enter, dozens, hundreds of teams. And a lot of these teams are people from completely outside the field. But when they come in with their idea, it really is a new and novel idea that many might consider crazy, but of course the day before it’s a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea.
At the moment, there are a small number of XPrizes available to teams like the $10 million Progressive Insurance Automotive XPrize. Inner-City High School students from West Philadelphia High competed against the best and brightest engineers to develop a feasible 100-mile-a-gallon car. They were the only High School that made it that far. Although they did not win , they proved that no matter where you come from, be it urban poverty or MIT, you can innovate and alter the world around you.
Diamandis notes,
Small teams of individuals are now empowered by the use various, very powerful exponential technologies to do what large corporations and governments could do before. We live in a day and age where, literally, a small team of people can touch the lives and positively affect the lives of a billion people. The rate at which innovation is occurring, that breakthroughs are coming online is growing extraordinarily.
GrabCAD sees it exactly the same way. We couldn't exist without the exponential growth of computer CPU power, networking and powerful CAD software that allows any engineer or designer, in any part of the world, to create anything they want. And share the files, how they made it and hear how they'd improve it. And when these innovation in Open Engineering and collaboration trigger greater innovation by allowing people to share their 'crazy' ideas and let other improve them, those breakthroughs happen.
Another submission for the Progressive Insurance Automotive XPrize.
To watch Dr. Peter Diamandis talk more, click here. For more on the XPrize, check out their website. If you feel inspired, drop into our Design Challenge page!
