A million dollars for your best idea
Google, as part of their 10 year anniversary, is launching Project 10100, offering millions of dollars to the best ideas they can find for helping people.
From their FAQ:
What is Project 10100? Project 10100 (pronounced “Project 10 to the 100th”) is a call for ideas to change the world, in the hope of helping as many people as possible.
Why is Google doing this? The short answer is that we think helping people is a good thing, and empowering people to help others is an even better thing. Here’s the long answer.
How many ideas are you funding? We have committed $10 million to fund up to five ideas selected by our advisory board.
As best I can tell you don’t need to execute the idea or even have a plan. They are paying for the idea itself. A creative thinkers dream! Except of course you likely lose control over the idea after you win your cash.
Read the full FAQ here. Deadline is October 20th.
Lose control over the idea after you win your cash??
Com’on! You’re talking about the Google right? More likely you forfeit any rights over the idea as soon as you tell them about it.
From what I read, you don’t get the money or the idea – they put out in RFP on your idea and give the money.
Am I reading that correctly?
Nice, submit your free idea so that someone else can get paid to do it. Oh, and don’t be evil…
You guys are funny – if the goal is helping other people, who cares if you profit from it or not?
I get the weirdness of losing control of the idea, that’s strange (why not give the idea submitter first crack at a proposal to use the money?).
But not profiting in philanthropic contest seems a contradictory complaint.
Duly noted… and agree on the purpose of the project. I got sucked in by the title “A million dollars for your best idea”, which after some analysis, isn’t fully accurate.
That said, I imagine that the Google marketing team will find some wonderful way to recognize the ideator, irrespective any financial reward.
And maybe they should at least be offered some involvement, although after thinking about it, I wonder how many people will recommend windshield wipers for eyeglasses (like Steve Martin in “The Jerk”) and other things like that. Such innovators may or may not care to be involved.
“All i need is this lamp..” – I love that movie.
Sorry for suckering you in with the title :) I was all excited at all prospect of money for ideas at all, and that I hadn’t heard of this contest earlier.
Just can’t help it: “He hates these cans!”
Sorry, nothing else substantive. Happy Friday Cheers!
“Cup ‘o Pizza” – now there was an innovation.
It’s weird that some people think that they “own” an idea as if it hadn’t involved any input from anybody else: a book you read, a teacher, a country you visited etc. etc. Ideas are a dime a dozen — the hard part is choosing the one that is most likely to succeed having the resources to drive it through to fruition.