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Announcing the Finalists for the Unlimited Human Potential M-Prize

by Polly LaBarre on April 17, 2014

Humanocracy

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Announcing the Finalists for the Unlimited Human Potential M-Prize

By Polly LaBarre

April 17, 2014 at 8:54am

We are at a genuine inflection point when it comes to how we organize human effort to productive ends. In this creative and disruptive economy, where the challenge is to inspire and mobilize the full imagination, initiative, and passion of every single person, every single day, leaders must rethink their organization’s boundaries, redesign work, redefine the work of leadership, and re-jigger their measure of value.

Specifically, organizations that are built to thrive in the 21st century must focus both on unleashing human capacity—designing environments and systems for work that inspire individuals to contribute their full imagination, initiative, and passion—and on aggregating human capability—leveraging new social, mobile, and digital technologies to activate, enlist, and organize talent across boundaries.

Those are the twin challenges we tackled with the Unlimited Human Potential M-Prize. We put out the call for the most progressive practices and innovative ideas for unleashing human capability. And we asked, how can we tap into emerging digital technologies and the principles that undergird them (such as transparency, collaboration, meritocracy, open­ness, commu­nity and autonomy) to create organizations that are truly fit for human beings?

Management innovators and hackers from all over the world answered the call and shared a rich mix of stories and hacks around inverting the pyramid, busting bureaucracy, redesigning people practices for a social, mobile, self-determined, big-data driven world, and reimagining organizations entirely as dynamic value-creating networks. We received over one hundred entries from every realm of endeavor and every corner of the world.

Today we are delighted to announce the finalists of the Unlimited Human Potential Challenge. We'd also like to offer up our deepest thanks to everyone who contributed to this M-Prize—your initiative, inventiveness and passion have added so much to the challenge of making all of our organizations fit for the future (and genuinely fit for human beings).

Here are the finalists in alphabetical order. Congratulations!

 

What’s next: the finalists will get to work building upon their entries based upon comments from the community and notes from the judging team. So, please do weigh in and spread the word—management innovation is a collective exercise! We'll announce the final results in late May.

As a reminder, winners of the Unlimited Human Potential Challenge will receive significant recognition on the MIX, by SAP, and on Fortune.com. Winners will also earn the chance to be recognized at SAP’s annual SAPPHIRE NOW event (June 3-5, 2014) and at the MIX Mashup (November 18-20, 2014 in NYC).

For the first time ever, these winners will be eligible for an additional set of prizes. Based on their potential to make a genuine impact—specifically, the potential to produce a viable app, product, company, or even a movement—up to three winners will win:

*A design thinking workshop with experts from SAP Labs to further develop, prototype, and possibly scale the idea

*A mentoring session with executives from SAP Ventures, including introductions to business incubators and/or angel investors

*And, depending on the results of interviews conducted by the SAP Ventures team and the market potential of the winning entry, one of these entrants could also win up to USD $50,000 in funding from SAP Ventures, to go towards the formation of a new start-up company or venture. (Special consideration for this optional award will be given to entries with the potential to leverage SAP HANA.)

We’re tremendously excited to be able to offer such a powerful collection of rewards for contributors to the M-Prize. Please note: while the prize purse will focus on contributions with the potential to leverage SAP’s HANA technology, the MIX and the judging team will consider all contributions equally. Any Story or Hack that meets the Challenge Brief has the potential to make it to the winner’s circle.

We have a tremendous panel of judges for this M-Prize. They represent a depth, breadth, and real diversity of experience and insight around the themes of Unlimited Human Potential:

James DeJulio, co-founder & president, Tongal

Lisa Gansky - Entrepreneur and author, The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing

Gary Hamel - Co-founder of the MIX and author, The Future of Management

Umair Haque - Director of Havas Media Labs and author of Betterness: Economics for Humans

Norbert Kunz, CEO Social Impact GmbH, Ashoka Fellow

Charlene Li - Founder, Altimeter Group and author, Groundswell and Open Leadership

Tom Malone, Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and author, The Future of Work

Nilofer Merchant, Strategist, thinker, and author of The New How and 11 Rules for Creating Value in the #SocialEra

Jacob Morgan - Co-founder, Chess Media and author, The Collaborative Organization

Don Tapscott - Author, Speaker and Advisor on Media, Technology, and Innovation

Thanks again to everyone who contributed to the Unlimited Human Potential M-Prize!

 

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peter-rennie's picture
April 18, 2014 at 12:57pm
Peter Rennie

To those folks who made the final round (from one who didn't) congratulations. I look forward to reading your contributions in greater depth.

Warmly Peter Rennie.