It is a form of social engineering, which focuses to the creation and elaboration of the best and sustainable ideas, coming from the best innovators.
Terwiesch and Ulrich show how to design and run innovation tournaments: pitting competing opportunities against one another, and then consistently filtering out the weakest ones until only those with the highest profit potential remain.
The aims and the design principles of the innovation competitions are noted in the literature as follows: In September 2009, Netflix awarded 1 million US dollars to the winner of Netflix prize—the team who by 10% improved the accuracy of predictions about the extent that people enjoy a movie based on their past movie preferences.
Since 2010, the IXL Innovation Olympics has provided a platform to source breakthrough ideas, for CEOs from Fortune 100 Companies, using teams from MBA, Engineering, Social sciences and other programs across the globe.
As an example, IBM used this platform to source breakthrough ideas for increasing accessibility to screens and devices for the aging population.