Competitions are the best way for generating innovation
A bunch of people on a deadline will deliver awesome results…
At Robotex, we believe in hosting competitions on everything!
Need to compile an email list — have the team compete on who brings the most emails.
Need to haul 100+ tables and chairs — have the volunteers form teams and race for it.
Need to produce the first nuclear weapons — have scientists work day-and-night in the fear of the enemy. (Okay, that was not us but still…)
In any case, knowing others are working on the same goal makes us humans strive to deliver the best results we can. Especially when the award on the other side is big enough. Or the effect of not doing something is bad enough.
Obviously there are always people that are not motivated by such challenges. Instead, they want to do things at their own pace, not caring about the trophies. Perhaps participating more for the learning purpose.
Yet it is best to host competitions to generate real innovation!
This is why we have started an initiative called Innovation Challenge, which focuses on helping corporates find teams that want to solve big problems for them. Only to have those teams later on partner up with the them or simply buy ‘em.
The first such challenge was hosted last year together with Starship and focused more on helping them find talent. This year, we will take it to a new level with adding a challenge co-hosted with Taxify, that is launching its machine learning competition. Meanwhile, we will also enter the film industry with our robot-generated movie competition.
In short, let’s see how those competitions work out in 2018 and use the knowledge to start 10 new ones in 2019. Only this will eventually get us to real cyborgs and other type of much needed innovations!
Robotex International (November 30 — December 2) is our annual event and the Biggest Robotics Festival on the Planet. Thousands of engineers, executives, students and families come together to be inspired by industry leaders, build robots for various challenges and learn about the latest technology innovations.
