On a bright summer day in Santa Monica, just a few blocks away from the beach where he enjoys jogging, Tom Vander Ark, the 48-year-old president of the X Prize Foundation, issues a decidedly un-Californian vibe: "The world is without question facing the biggest, most complicated, and interrelated problems ever." Unlike the politicians and pundits frothing at the presidential battle royal, Vander Ark, a tall, strongly built man who looks younger than his age, is not being brash. He ticks off critical concerns in health care, education, energy, and global warming, among others. "It's clear that the government and the market can't solve these problems," he says. But even less like a politico or talking head, Vander Ark—whose name, like Noah and Joan before him, suggests salvation—is leading a charge to solve the world's problems with carrots, not sticks.
The idea for prize philanthropy took off with a private space race. To give the dormant NASA-monopolized space industry a boost, the X Prize Foundation awarded $10 million in 2004 to the team led by aircraft designer Burt Rutan and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen for launching a private aircraft, SpaceShipOne, 100 kilometers above the Earth. In all, the 27 registered teams that competed for the Ansari X Prize invested more than $100 million in their various rocket ships. Since then, the space industry has seen commitments of private investment capital approaching a billion dollars, including from such business pioneers as Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos. "It's how you do judo on the world," Vander Ark says, noting the amplification of minds, money, and solutions a well-designed prize can generate.
Before joining the foundation in January, Vander Ark, who divides his week between Santa Monica and Seattle, where his wife and youngest daughter live, served as the executive director of education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. For seven years, he oversaw the donation of more than $3.5 billion in scholarships and grants to improve public education in the United States. Whereas at the Gates Foundation they, in Vander Ark's terms, "pushed like hell," he's now helping pull the world in a right direction. With seven funded prizes in development for game-changing achievements in a variety of categories—with a total prize value of over $150 million—he's pulling harder than ever. Aiming to develop alternative energy systems and help combat global warming, the Automotive X Prize, which was announced at this year's New York International Auto Show, will award upward of $10 million to the team able to produce a vehicle that gets the energy equivalent of at least 100 miles to a gallon. The Archon X Prize for Genomics is a $10 million award to successfully sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days.
Over the next five years, X Prize will launch as many as 15 new prizes and award over $300 million—money the foundation raises itself. The next bounty up for grabs is a first in that it's funded by a corporate sponsor and, at $35 million, the largest yet. Google, already having conquered cyberspace, is now, in partnership with the foundation, setting its sights on deep space. The Google Lunar X Prize, announced in September, is a competition to see who can successfully land a rover on the moon. (The company, whose cofounder Larry Page is an X Prize Foundation trustee, recently added moon.google.com so that even the average cybernaut can explore the lunar surface.) NASA, meanwhile, has announced it won't make any attempt to return a man to the moon before 2015. "It's a private race to beat NASA back to the moon," Vander Ark says. No word yet as to whether Page, or Sergey Brin, will be the moon's first president.
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Get more information on the Google Lunar X Prize
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