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BHAGs for Innovators

 1 May 06

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When Jim Collins and Jerry Porras wrote Built to Last in 1994, they stressed the importance of what they called “Big Hairy Audacious Goals,” or BHAGs, as a powerful mechanism to stimulate progress in companies that were consistently successful.  As they noted:

“A BHAG engages people – it reaches out and grabs them in the gut.  It is tangible, energizing, highly focused.  People ‘get it’ right away; it takes little or no explanation.”

Well-designed innovation contests are BHAGs for innovators.  Whether public or private, they have the potential to generate rapid progress towards well-defined and measurable technical goals. 

In January, 1984, for example, DuPont sponsored a $15,000 prize that would go to the maker of the first human powered vehicle that exceeded 65 miles per hour.  Computer modeling had suggested a theoretical top speed for a human-powered vehicle to be between 65 and 70 mph, but most experts considered such a speed unachievable in practice.

About two and a half years after the prize was established, in May, 1986, Fast Freddy Markham won the DuPont Prize.  He went over 65 mph at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on a modified recumbent bike made by a small California company called Easy Racers.  Speed experts were proven wrong, and Easy Racers has been using the publicity ever since.

The Winner of the DuPont Prize in 1986

In 2002, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced its “Grand Challenge,” with a $1 million purse for the first unmanned vehicle that could navigate a course through the Nevada/California desert. 

The first challenge was run in March, 2004 with 15 entrants.  None of the entrants finished and so no prize was awarded. 

In 2005, DARPA raised the prize to $2 million and ran the race in October.  This time there was more success -- of the 23 vehicles entered, three finished in under 10 hours.  The winner was a team from Stanford Engineering.  Four other vehicles finished the course as well.  One of these was a Grey Ford Escape Hybrid that had been modified by programmers at a small insurance company called Gray Insurance.  This company, which had had no experience in robotics, took on the assignment as a Grand Challenge.

The Gray Development Team at DARPA’s Grand Challenge

Building on DARPA’s example, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has recently unveiled a range of 13 different development contests, which it calls Centennial Challenges.  The contests range from building equipment like solar sails and lunar excavators to designing an “astronaut glove” that can be used in outer space for long periods of time.

These kinds of public contests serve a number of objectives:

·        They are inexpensive for the sponsors.  After all, the sponsor of the contest only pays if someone wins.  

·        They bring in entries from all sources.  Both NASA and DARPA fund their technology research in many ways, but most of the entrants in these Challenges wouldn’t be able to handle the bureaucratic hurdles of applying for other kinds of federal funding.   

·        They spur rapid technical progress towards a goal.  After all, many people working on a problem from different angles will often lead to a faster solution. 

·        They communicate commitment to innovative solutions in a public and tangible way that may endure many years after the contest is over.  Ask the folks at EasyRacers, who have built a business around the speed of their recumbent bicycle.

Many of these contests take several years to pay off, as was the case with both the DuPont speed prize and the DARPA Grand Challenge.  When they succeed, however, they often represent major advances in applied knowledge.

Can private companies benefit from sponsoring development contests as well?  I think so, but this approach to innovation does have several drawbacks for profit-focused organizations. 

            First, it’s very difficult to keep the results proprietary.  As an open contest, competitors will be able to see the results as well.  Sponsoring companies might be able to gain access to the rights for the winner, but all the other entrants are free to take their knowledge to other interested companies. 

            A second problem is that it’s impossible to know when and if the contest will generate a winner.  Like the DuPont speed prize, or the more recent X Prize for commercial space flight, many of these contests have goals that seem unachievable when the contest is announced.  Early attempts often fail, as was the case with DARPA’s Grand Challenge.  As a result, companies can’t count on the results, or anticipate a return on their investment.

Companies may be able to address the competitive issue by sponsoring contests that are only open to their employees.  Internal innovation contests will have a number of teams from the same company working to achieve a similar technical goal via a variety of different development paths.   The entrants in an internal innovation contest will not be as wide-ranging as would be the case if there was open entry.  But the results need not be made public.

            Innovation contests seem like a promising approach as a way of stimulating new thinking and approaches, and also of tangibly demonstrating corporate commitment to innovation. They could be the BHAGs of a company’s innovation efforts.

More Information:

1. NASA Centennial Challenge website is here.
2. I did a previous update on the DARPA Challenge, in November 2005, called “Public Prototyping.” It’s here.
3. The New York Times story on NASA’s prototyping initiatives is here.
4. EasyRacers, the maker of recumbent bicycles and winner of the DuPont Human Powered Vehicle Prize in 1986, is here.
5. Jim Collins’ website is here.
6. An interview with Paul Trepagnier, the lead developer for the Gray Insurance Company’s entry into the DARPA Grand Challenge, is here.

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