Boston Innovation Prize
The Boston Innovation Prize for Energy-Efficient Air Conditioning is an initiative of the Barr Foundation in collaboration with the Cambridge Energy Alliance, a public-private collaboration to reduce energy usage in the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Because of air conditioning’s disproportionate impact on peak energy demand, the Prize is focused on developing radically improved efficiencies in space cooling and dehumidification.
The Barr Foundation is interested in Prize Philanthropy as a way to spur innovative approaches to social problems. Evidence shows that there are a number of circumstances when prizes are particularly effective in spurring innovation:
- When the desired outcome is known, but the route is not.
- To focus innovative efforts on problems for which solutions do not
seem to be forthcoming.
- To attract a broad spectrum of participants, including perhaps
‘unlikely’ participants.
- To help move a field in a particular direction.
- To facilitate cross-disciplinary perspectives brought to bear on a
problem.
The field of air conditioning seemed ripe for this prize. Although air conditioning developers and manufacturers have been working toward more efficient units, the Barr Foundation feels that additional focus on residential and small commercial sector cooling methods, backed by a substantial global prize, may spur additional innovation.
The Barr Foundation has recruited a group of national experts in this field to help shape the parameters of the prize, and to serve as judges.
The prize process will be administered by InnoCentive, a Massachusetts-based company that matches organizations with challenges with a network of ‘solvers’ around the world.
To learn more about the Boston Innovation Prize: Energy-Efficient Air Conditioning, go to the Clean Tech and Renewable Energy Pavilion.
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