Google offers $US10 million for world-changing ideas

Attention, budding entrepreneurs, thought leaders and bar-room philosophers – here is your chance to change the world and get a piece of $US10 million.

Attention, budding entrepreneurs, thought leaders and bar-room philosophers – here is your chance to change the world and get a piece of $US10 million.

Search giant Google is celebrating its 10th birthday by launching a competition called Project 10 to the 100th, which will look for world-changing ideas. The five best ideas will receive $US10 million of funding.

“Our company’s very name expresses our goal of achieving great results through smart technology that starts small and scales dramatically over time to have a tremendous long-term impact,” Google said in a website posting.

“Maybe the answer that helps somebody is in your head, in something you’ve observed, some notion that you’ve been fiddling with, some small connection you’ve noticed, some old thing you have seen with new eyes.”

The deadline for ideas is 20 October. A panel of Google employees will pick the 100 best submissions and then Google users will vote to pick the 20 finalists and a Google advisory panel will select the five winners.

Google says it does not want to be prescriptive on the kinds of ideas it wants to see, but the Project 10 to the 100th website suggests some categories and guide questions that might help you refine your thinking.

• Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
• Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
• Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
• Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?
• Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?
• Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
• Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?
• Everything else: Sometimes the best ideas don’t fit into any category at all.