Project 10 to the 100th

As part of their 10th birthday celebrations, Google announced project "10 to the 100th". In an effort to source innovative ideas to tackle the world's social problems, they are pledging $10M to fund up to 5 concepts submitted by individual internauts (see note 1).

Is this truly an innovate approach on charity, or more of a publicity stunt? I think crowdsourcing has huge potential. It will be interesting to see if this expiriment in crowdsourcing yields anything valuable. With the funding level set at $10M, this is obviously a small time test by Google. But the administrative work required by crowdsourcing is immense! With a serious crowdsourcing campaign, how much garbage do you have to screen through in order to sift out the true gems... It seems Google will let their employees do the dirty work of filtering through all that rubish; they will be the ones selecting the 100 "best" ideas which will be narrowed down to 20 by us internauts with finally up to 5 winners selected by an advisory committee. To make crowdsourcing work, there has to be an efficient way to deal with volume and not miss those gems. What are the odds that the developer at his cubicle will have the stamina to review 1,000 ideas and not miss one with real potential?

My first suggestion to improve this campaign: I would have loved Google to add economic viability to the judging criterion. Sure, their intention is just to give away some charitable donations and gain publicity. But will you be able to change the world with a few million dollars? Google offers no explanations for how the ideas will be funded after the non-profits have burned through the initial $2M that each idea will receive. Why not encourage ideas that will be self-financing? We know giving away things isn't always the best way to help, think of mosquito nets given away in Africa being (mis)used to overfish rivers instead of protecting people from malaria. And sustainable social improvements can and should often be achieved through econimically viable ideas. These are the ones that will last and spread around the world rather than dieing in the hands of some inefficient non-profit.

One other issue with this contest. Google does not mention it being possible for entrepreneurs to use this campaign as a possible funding source for ideas they themselves would like to implement. Rather, all ideas and funding will be awarded to non-profits sourced by Google or identified by the idea's submitter. Google knows the power of capitalism, why not use it to encourage even more people to bring innovative ideas to the table? Sure, real deliverables would need to be agreed upon along with the funds; but how much risk is there still that non-profits will be inefficient with the awarded funds? They aren't known to be the greatest value generaters.

In summary, this is an interesting initiative... It will probably generate a couple interesting ways to quickly burn through $2M without much to show for it.


note 1: internaut = users of the internet. I really want to see this word become mainstream in the English lexicon. The French have "borrowed" enough English words, I think it is at least owed to them to send one the other way. Plus, for some reason, this word always brings a smile to my face.