If you’re looking to go on an adventure in the great outdoors, the variety of landscapes in the Pacific Northwest — from temperate rainforest and brilliant geological formations to expansive sand dunes and stunning river-carved canyons — are awe-inspiring for even the seasoned traveler.
Hoh Rainforest, Olympic National Park, Washington State
Named for the Hoh River that runs from Mount Olympus to the Pacific Coast, the Hoh Rainforest is one of the largest temperate rainforests in the United States. This magical ecosystem is one of the wettest places in the country, with an annual average rainfall of 140 inches per year. All that rain creates a dense canopy of deciduous and coniferous trees, and the forest floor is blanketed with ferns, fungi and mosses.
A gigantic rainforest once stretched from southeastern Alaska all the way to central California along the Pacific Coast — the Hoh Rainforest is what remains of that ancient forest.
Located around an hour drive from the city of Forks, Washington, and a two-hour drive or so from Port Angeles, the Hoh Rainforest is in the western portion of Olympic National Park. To get there take Highway 101 to Upper Hoh Road.
The old-growth forest has a year-round campground with 72 sites along the Hoh River. Reservations can be made six months in advance at recreation.gov.
Stop in at the Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center — closed from January through early March — for tips on making the most of your visit.
From the visitor center there are two loop trails: the 0.8-mile Hall of Mosses Trail — which features old-growth forest, including a maple tree grove and club moss springing from the forest floor — and the 1.2-mile Spruce Nature Trail, which leads you along the Hoh River and Taft Creek through new- and old-growth forest.
The main hiking trail in the Hoh Rainforest is the out-and-back Hoh River Trail. You can take this trail as far as you feel comfortable, up to its endpoint 18.5 miles in. Along the way the trail takes you past multiple campsites, the farthest of which is Glacier Meadows at 17.3 miles in. The trail ends with a view of Mt. Olympus at Blue Glacier moraine.
“I love the Hoh Rainforest! The Hoh River trail parallels the Hoh River and is relatively easy. At the end of August, the river is low enough that you can wade across it near Tom Creek,” adventurer Sarah Strock told EcoWatch.
The Hoh Rainforest. Sarah Strock
Just past the ranger station on the Hoh River Trail is the Hoh Lake Trail, which goes up to Bogachiel Peak between the Sol Duc Valley and the rainforest. Turn-around day hikes in this area include Mineral Creek Falls 2.7 miles in; First River access 0.9 miles in; Cedar Grove four miles in; and Five-Mile Island, which is five miles one way.
More information on hiking and permits for the Hoh River Trail and Olympic National Park can be found on the Wilderness Backpacking Reservations page. Pets are not permitted on Hoh Rainforest trails.
With the Hoh’s plentiful rainfall comes a rich ecosystem of flora and fauna. Average summer temperatures stay in the pleasant mid-70 degrees Fahrenheit, and the dense forest canopy and thick undergrowth provide ample shade for the rainforest’s many species.
Mammals like black bears, Roosevelt elk and river otters are common. Mountain lions and bobcats can be harder to spot, but at night you may hear or feel them roaming about their mystical home. Making their way along the forest floor are snails, banana slugs, salamanders, snakes and rodents. Songs, screeches and hoots from barred owls, American robins and Canada grey jay can frequently be heard, along with sightings of these majestic creatures. The endangered northern spotted owl also graces the old-growth trees of the forest.
Among the mammoth trees you will spot in the Hoh Rainforest are red cedar, sitka spruce, douglas fir and big leaf maple. As you explore the rainforest, you will see many fallen trees. When one of these giants topples, it allows sunlight onto the floor of the forest and provides nutrients for many new plants, animals and fungi.
There is truly no place like the ancient, hushed wonderland of the Hoh Rainforest — living evidence of the height of our planet’s balance and beauty.
Painted Hills, Central Oregon
The red and gold Painted Hills of Central Oregon sit like colorful camel humps in the foreground of the Cascade Mountain Range. The soft, rolling hills were formed 32 to 35 million years ago by sedimented clay and cooled and oxidized ash from the nearby mountains.
“If you drive north past the Painted Hills, the road will become thin and rutted. It passes through the John Day river canyon, with views normally available only to the ranchers and farmers who line its banks. It comes out on the crest of the Ochoco Mountains near Antelope, in a location where you can watch the sun set behind the Cascades – spanning from Rainier to South Sister,” lifelong Oregon resident Zach Spier told EcoWatch.
The climate east and west of the Cascades is vastly different. The western part of Oregon is temperate and rainy, while in the east lies the dry and cooler high desert.
To the east of the mountains is the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. The monument is made up of three units — including the Painted Hills — each from one to two hours apart by car. The formation of the varying strata of the fossil beds began approximately 100 million years ago; it continues to this day.
Located about 10 miles from the town of Mitchell, the Painted Hills are located within the John Day River Basin. The ash that gives the hills some of their layers blew east from the mountains, and combined with shale and clay deposits to give the hills their colorful stripes.
“The reddish and yellowish layers consist of laterites, soils rich in iron and aluminum that were created in tropical climates with a distinct wet and dry season. Red soils come from a more tropical period, while the yellows are from a drier and cooler time. Dark black dots and streaks in the hills are stains from manganese nodules, likely the work of plants that fixed the mineral or from salts that became concentrated as pools of water rich in the mineral dried up,” the Geology In website explains.
There are five hiking trails in the Painted Hills unit, each with its own parking area along Bear Creek Road. They include the 0.5-mile Painted Hills Overlook Trail, the 1.6-mile Carroll Rim Trail, the 0.25-mile Painted Cove Trail, the 0.25-mile Red Scar Knoll Trail and the 0.25-mile Leaf Hill Trail.
Learn more about the region’s geological history at the Thomas Condon Visitor Center, located in the Sheep Rock unit of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. The visitor center has a paleontology lab, fossil gallery and displays with information on the more than 40-million-year-old fossil record of the area. The center also offers a short film, Layers of Life: Stories of Ancient Oregon.
Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area
While exploring the Pacific Northwest, the rugged and dynamic Oregon Coast is a place you won’t want to miss! Among its wonders is the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area — one of the most extensive temperate coastal sand dunes on Earth. Looking out upon the expanse of undulating golden sand, you might feel as though you’ve traveled to the Sahara Desert.
Part of the Siuslaw National Forest, the 31,500-acre Oregon Dunes were designated as a National Recreation Area in 1972. The sand in the dunes comes from sedimentary rock, uplifted and blown over from the Oregon Coast Mountain Range 12 million years ago. The rock moved downstream in rivers, eroding into sand. The shoreline as it stands now stabilized 6,000 years ago, but wind and water shape the dunes into various formations that change throughout the year.
The unique ecosystem of ocean, forest and dunes is home to many animal and plant species, including the western snowy plover — tiny shore birds who lay their eggs on the open sand; black-tailed deer — a subspecies of mule deer who sometimes graze on foredune grasses near the beach; bald eagles, raptors and golden eagles, who can be seen soaring above the dunes in the warm summer months; bobcats who roam the dunes at night, hunting birds and small mammals living in small stands of trees; the rare Humboldt marten, who usually lives in old-growth forests along the coast, but ecosystem changes have caused to take up residence in sand dune forests; sand verbena — a sweet-smelling succulent with bright yellow and pink flowers; tiny coastal strawberries that ripen into a rare and delicious treat in late June; and European beachgrass — an invasive species introduced in the early 1900s to keep the dunes from overtaking railroads, roads and ports, but which now covers more than half the landscape and threatens all of it.
There are several trails to guide you through the varied landscapes of the Oregon Dunes. One of them is the Tahkenitch Dunes Trail near Gardiner, Oregon. This six-mile loop takes about two-and-a-half hours, offers opportunities for birdwatching and does not allow dogs.
“The Tahkenitch Dunes trail is a quiet respite, taking hikers in a loop through multiple ecosystems, including areas in the process of becoming forested,” Spier told EcoWatch.
A shorter hike that you can take with your canine best pal is the 1.4-mile Tahkenitch Creek Trail, which is also a loop that takes about half an hour to complete.
Another possibility is the Oregon Dunes Loop Trail — a four-mile, moderately challenging hike near Westlake, Oregon. It takes about an hour and 17 minutes and does not allow dogs.
If you’re looking to gain some elevation and see a body of water other than the magnificent Pacific Ocean, the Threemile Lake Trail might be for you. This out-and-back hike is a total of 6.1 miles and takes you 997 feet above sea level to Threemile Lake. Starting out near Gardiner, the moderately challenging route takes about two hours and 47 minutes and is best tackled from March through October.
The distinctive colors, textures, animals and plants of the wind-blown Oregon Sand Dunes pretty much guarantee that whatever you choose to do while visiting this one-of-a-kind landscape, your experience will be unforgettable.
Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, Border of Washington and Oregon
A trip to the Pacific Northwest would not be complete without a visit to the Columbia River Gorge. The gorge is an 80-mile-long, meandering spectacle of ridges, overlooks, cliffs and waterfalls. At 1,243 miles long, the Columbia River is the biggest river in the Pacific Northwest and forms the border of Oregon and Washington.
“I have ridden my motorcycle many times through the Columbia River Gorge area on both sides of the river, Highway 84 in Oregon or 14 in Washington, and both offer spectacular views going both directions of the marvelous geology and wondrous architecture of Mother Nature,” Harley rider and nature enthusiast Patrick Roat told EcoWatch.
The country’s largest national scenic area was formed approximately 18,000 years ago when an ice dam broke and Lake Missoula flooded the region on its way to the sea, forming gorges in its path.
Long before pioneers settled the gorge, the Klickitat Tribe thrived on the river’s plentiful salmon from both the Klickitat and Columbia Rivers.
The Columbia Gorge boasts the most waterfalls in the U.S., including the famous Multnomah Falls, Oregon’s tallest waterfall at 620 feet.
Hiking and camping are both popular pastimes here, as are picking your own fresh fruit at local orchards, enjoying fresh produce from nearby farms and visiting regional wineries.
Hundreds of wildlife species grace the Columbia Basin Watershed, including beavers, bobcats, black bears, the Pacific tree frog, yellow-bellied marmots, chipmunks, the western tanager, the greater roadrunner, the California ground squirrel, steelhead, walleye and small and largemouth bass.
One of the many trails you can follow through this glorious landscape is the 2.3-mile Oneonta Gorge Trail that leads you through a canyon past waterfalls and scenic views. The best time to hike this trail may be in late summer, as the canyon is at risk for flash floods in the spring. Also, stay clear of log jams.
Other hikes include the 13.1-mile out and back Eagle Creek Trail — 25.8 total miles — to Wahtum Lake; the six-mile Munra Point Trail with an elevation gain of 2,300 feet and spectacular views; and the 12-mile Tunnel Falls hike that will take you past multiple waterfalls.
Head to the Bridge of the Gods trailhead to join the Pacific Crest Trail, Section G of which leads to Timberline Lodge.
Another fun option is the Hood River Fruit Loop, a 35-mile drive through the Hood River Valley, where you will be greeted by fruit stands, u-pick farms and wineries. Depending on the season, you may find cherries, berries, lavender, apricots, flowers, pumpkins or wine and beer tastings.
“I absolutely love it in the summertime, it’s like a mini Grand Canyon in places, and it feels sort of hidden because it’s not on major highways per se like I-90 or I-5,” Roat said.
For those who love to be out on the water, the gorge provides opportunities for boating, canoeing, windsurfing and swimming, as well as kayak tours.
The Columbia River Gorge has something for everyone — each season offers new ways to appreciate this testament to the untamed splendor of the Pacific Northwest.
“The canyons, spires, cliffs, and river basin all afford breathtaking views and leave you with a sense of reverence about the area that will draw you back for more,” Roat added.
The post 4 Natural Wonders of the Pacific Northwest appeared first on EcoWatch.
https://www.ecowatch.com/natural-wonders-pacific-northwest-ecowatch.html
Last winter, we kept our house at 60 degrees and our electric bill was STILL $280. I’ve been interested in solar for a long time, but on the long list of house projects (especially when you’re restoring a 200 year old house on the historic registry) some are more pressing than others.
But with a few of those major projects wrapping up, and a daunting bill before me, I figured now was the time for a quick google search on solar panels, and let me tell you….. It can be very overwhelming.
Figuring out the rules (cough, cough, historic society), incentives or rebates if applicable, how much it would cost, how much we could save, etc. felt a little like a part-time job. But, one website made it really easy to compare things, and I am happy to be partnering with Aurora Solar to share that site with you.
Because I think you should be able to easily run the numbers on your house without a lot of hassle!
This post is sponsored by Aurora Solar, but all thoughts and opinions are my own.
If you’ve ever gotten a solar quote, there’s a good chance that Aurora Solar was involved. Aurora was founded in 2013 after its co-founders spent seven months trying to design a solar energy system using a patchwork of different tools.
Afterall, designing a solar system shouldn’t be harder than actually installing one. So they built software specifically for solar professionals. Today, more than 7,000 solar organizations use Aurora, and more than 20 million solar projects have been designed using the platform. They are also the largest solar software provider in the world. Their software is used by roughly 80% of the top 75 residential solar companies in the U.S.
All of this tech has been primarily used by professional installers to map your roof and then create a proposal, but now Aurora is offering this tech to us to help compare quotes.
So instead of having to call a bunch of different installers, I could use the Aurora Solar Marketplace to understand my solar potential, compare estimates, understand my possible savings, look into battery storage and other home electrification incentives, and map out different financing options.
1. know how much electricity the system will actually produce
Before you even get into the price, make sure you understand what you’re actually being quoted.
Two solar systems can have very different prices because they may not be the same size or produce the same amount of electricity. A cheaper system might simply have fewer panels and offset less of your electric bill.
With Aurora, you can compare solar estimates and see the system size, energy production, and how much electricity the system should offset.
You can also upload your utility bill to get a solar estimate based more closely on your actual energy usage, to make the quote accurate for you instead of a ‘generic household’.
2. understand the solar payback period
Aurora calculates things like payback period and lifetime savings, which makes it much easier to understand the long-term finances.
The solar payback period is basically how long it takes for your estimated savings to make up for what you spent on the system, and this is the number that surprised me most!
One estimate had a payback period of around 7 years, and another was closer to 11 years! Over 25 years, two of the estimates I looked at had almost a $13,000 difference in projected savings.
Of course, these are still projections as electricity rates can change (HELLO 2026) but when you’re trying to compare two options for the same house, knowing that one is projected to pay for itself four years sooner is pretty useful information.
3. look beyond the monthly payment
Depending on the installer, you may be looking at a cash purchase, solar loan, lease, or power purchase agreement.
But thankfully with Aurora you can compare the different financing options side-by-side which makes it a lot easier to see the trade-offs. One option may have a lower upfront cost, another may have a lower monthly payment, and another may give you better long-term savings.
4. find out which solar incentives actually apply to you
The minute you start Googling solar, you can find federal incentives, state incentives, utility programs, rebates, net metering, and a whole bunch of information that may or may not even apply to where you live.
And some of the articles ranking at the top of Google are several years old! (RIP to the federal incentives canceled at the end of 2025.) But, Aurora can account for solar incentives when calculating the cost and savings of a system, including state, local, and utility-specific programs.
I would still double check any incentive or tax benefit you’re planning to use before signing a contract, especially because programs and eligibility can change, but having all the relevant information in the same place makes the research process much less overwhelming.
5. research the installer, equipment, and warranties
Aurora lets you compare solar installers based on things like reviews, reputation, pricing, and financing options, which I think is just as important as the actual quote.
I’d also look closely at what equipment is included. What panels are they using? What kind of inverter? How long are the equipment warranties? Is there also a workmanship warranty from the installer? Who handles repairs if something goes wrong five or ten years from now?
And, I know I’ve said it a million times, but it’s nice to see it side-by-side without having to fill out a bunch of forms and be hounded on the phone just to get an idea of what solar may look like.
The post How to Compare Solar Quotes: What to Look For Before You Choose appeared first on Going Zero Waste.
How to Compare Solar Quotes: What to Look For Before You Choose
Green Living
Sustainability In Your Ear: XPRIZE’s David Babson on Why Climate Grand Challenges Need Buyers, Too
Buyers contracted nearly 30 million tons of durable carbon removal in 2025, more than triple the 2024 total, according to CDR.fyi data reported by Heatmap. About 90% of those purchases came from a single company, Microsoft, and suppliers delivered only about 450,000 tons during the year. That is a sliver of the six to 10 billion tons of removal a year that climate scenarios suggest the world will need by 2050. The technology to pull carbon out of the air works, but the customers needed to scale it remain scarce.
Our guest today, David Babson, is executive vice president of the Energy, Climate, and Nature domain at the XPRIZE Foundation. He calls the slow progress a market failure, because the technology is progressing faster than it is being adopted. Babson previously led MIT’s Climate Grand Challenges initiative and was a program director at the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E. His portfolio includes XPRIZE Carbon Removal, which drew 1,334 teams and whose participants have raised more than $3.3 billion. In April 2025, Mati Carbon won its $50 million grand prize for spreading crushed basalt on smallholder farms in India, where the rock locks away carbon dioxide. “If people could make money taking carbon out of the air and putting it underground, as opposed to only being able to make money taking it from underground and putting it in the air, we would be in a better place,” Babson says. Mati is weathering the slump in part because its rock dust also improves soil health and crop yields, giving farmers a reason to participate that doesn’t depend on carbon credit prices.
XPRIZE’s answer is to change what winners receive. Babson describes “mixed purses” that pair a cash award with a guaranteed buyer through an advance market commitment, a power purchase agreement, or an offtake contract. In one thought experiment, a carbon removal prize would come with a separate $1 billion fund raised from credit buyers, which qualified teams could draw on as they deliver verified tons. XPRIZE is applying the same thinking to a planned series of fusion energy prizes, pairing technical milestones with market mechanisms to build the supply chain that commercial fusion will require. The same gap between invention and adoption shows up in other XPRIZE competitions. On September 23, XPRIZE Wildfire awarded about $4.55 million from its $11 million purse, with defense contractor Anduril Industries taking first place in autonomous fire response along with a $1 million Lockheed Martin bonus. Babson expects costs to fall as fire agencies adopt the tools and as startups license individual components into cheaper platforms, though underfunded agencies will need a way to buy the first systems. He also notes that the competition left fuel management and ground-based autonomy for future prizes. Earlier this year, program director Andrea Santy told us that field testing had moved ahead of drone regulations. In biodiversity, Limelight Rainforest won $5 million for surveying 100 hectares of tropical forest in under 24 hours and identifying more than 250 species. Biodiversity still lacks a price, but Babson argues that once ecosystems can be measured, slow-walking policy becomes “a dereliction of what they should be doing.”
We also discuss the tension inside XPRIZE’s vision of “equitable abundance,” including a $101 million Healthspan prize that could add years of consumption to longer lives. Babson argues that abundant, cheap clean energy would let society move beyond efficiency as its organizing principle, powering uses such as indoor vertical farms that could return millions of acres of farmland to nature. You can follow XPRIZE’s new competitions and get involved in its prize ideation workshops at xprize.org.
- Subscribe to Sustainability In Your Ear on iTunes
- Follow Sustainability In Your Ear on Spreaker, iHeartRadio, or YouTube
Interview Transcript
Mitch Ratcliffe 00:36
Hello. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are on this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability In Your Ear. This is the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition to a sustainable, carbon-neutral society, and I’m your host, Mitch Ratcliffe. Thanks for joining the conversation today.
Let’s talk about the power and the uses of grand challenge programs to kickstart low-carbon industries and respond to the changing environment. Over the past several years, we’ve talked on the show with leaders of grand challenge programs designed to accelerate progress on humanity’s most difficult challenges, from pulling carbon out of the atmosphere to fighting rapidly growing wildfire threats in cities and rural communities. Many of these competitions have been launched by XPRIZE, whose leaders have shared on the show the stories of these competitions as they launched and unfolded.
Today is a chance to take stock, to look back and think about how climate markets, technology, and politics are changing fast, and how that makes this a good moment to ask the question: Are these programs designed to accelerate progress actually delivering that progress?
Our guest today designs XPRIZE’s climate bets. David Babson is executive vice president of the Energy, Climate, and Nature domain at the XPRIZE Foundation. Before XPRIZE, he was the executive director of MIT’s Climate Grand Challenges initiative and a program director at the U.S. Energy Department’s ARPA-E energy technology research agency.
His portfolio includes the largest incentive in prize history. In 2025, Mati Carbon received a $50 million grand prize for their enhanced rock weathering solution for capturing and drawing down carbon, and XPRIZE now reports that companies participating in its programs have raised $3.3 billion. That carbon removal win arrived just as the removal market hit serious turbulence, and as XPRIZE’s wildfire competition wrapped up with its top prize still unclaimed.
So we’re going to discuss what grand challenges can really accomplish, which winners continue to build and which stall, and what the reasons are, as well as the tensions inside a portfolio that funds both climate solutions and longer human lifespans. We’ll get to the conversation right after this brief commercial break. Stay tuned.
[COMMERCIAL BREAK]
Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear, and welcome, David Babson, to Sustainability In Your Ear. How are you doing today?
David Babson 03:10
I’m doing well.
Mitch Ratcliffe 03:11
I’m glad to have you here. You’ve run research portfolios at ARPA-E and MIT. What can a prize purse accomplish that a well-funded grant program can’t, or are they complementary?
David Babson 03:22
They’re absolutely complementary. The way that I think about it is that the value of these different mechanisms for promoting innovation is at different parts of the innovation supply chain, if you will. A prize is not a substitute for the very necessary investments that places like governments make into basic, applied, and advanced research. In fact, those types of investments are really valuable for establishing the innovation ecosystems and the technical capacities to eventually win prizes.
Where the prize is very valuable is somewhat downstream: translating technologies, ideas, and innovations that are coming out of academia and labs to market for scale. It challenges the innovators to imagine those technical capacities as solutions to global challenges, and then the visibility that the prize brings to those translations of technologies de-risks funding to flow to those innovators so they can imagine their uses in practice.
So I actually see them as very complementary, particularly when it comes to solutions in the energy and climate space that require rapid adoption of technologies in markets to have impact. Just having an energy solution or a climate solution is not valuable unless it can be de-risked and connected to markets to scale for impact. And that’s what the prize is actually very good at doing.
Mitch Ratcliffe 05:22
That comes through in the impact report that you all published recently. About 1,300 different organizations were catalyzed. The groups came together, apparently, because of their desire to compete in the competition.
What I’ve found in my work with public-private partnerships, in particular, is that impact investors are looking for that initial traction, and to a degree, the prize and the distribution of money within the prize group is that catalyst that says there’s a real opportunity for an impact profit, something that both does good and is profitable. How does the organization consult with the financial communities that are going to back these companies once your prize has been awarded? Is there a backroom conversation about that, for lack of a better way of putting it?
David Babson 06:10
Not an explicit backroom conversation about it, but the prize itself brings attention to the innovations that are coming out to win the competition. Oftentimes, as you’re noting, these impact investing communities exist, and they are looking for technologies to invest in to have impact.
What the prize is effective at doing is casting a wider net and surfacing the best solutions across the board, where there may have been silos in the past, or there may not have been transparency to individual investors about where to put their money. The prize is capable of elevating all of them, creating better visibility, and therefore, just by its inherent operation, creates better opportunities for investment capital to flow to the right types of teams to have greater impact more quickly.
So we don’t have explicit discussions with those types of investor communities to have them directly connected to individual prizes. But we often consult with investors and experts in industry to inform the metrics that we would want to have demonstrated, so that we know that when teams are winning our competitions, the demonstrations that they do are de-risking capital to flow to those innovators so that they can be translated to market.
Mitch Ratcliffe 07:47
We’re talking about growing industries, which of course means diversifying into a lot of specializations. Once you’ve got this kind of anchor winning team or teams, how does XPRIZE think about propagating the information that’s necessary for the rest of the industry to grow and fill in around them, in order to provide the kind of comprehensive geographic coverage and range of functions that are necessary for the industry to thrive? Is that something that you think about cultivating, like you would in agriculture?
David Babson 08:22
It is something that we think a lot about. With a few of the more recent prize competitions that we’ve run, we have also paired those competitions with a subsequent impact phase, which is designed to further build the community that has been established through the operation of the prize and connect the technologies that came out of the competition to the right types of markets and investors so that they can scale.
So that is one of the things that we’re thinking about in future competitions as well: not just running an innovation competition to surface new innovations, but how do we augment the community building that the prize provides as a way to also promote the back-end business models and industries that can scale those solutions for impact?
Mitch Ratcliffe 09:19
How would you describe the patterns you’re looking for that indicate that an organization can become that durable enterprise? What separates them from the rest? Have you got thoughts about that?
David Babson 09:29
I do have thoughts about it. In a lot of ways, the rigorous metrics that we set up when we’re designing the competition are informed by what experts believe would be the necessary demonstrations to actually generate a solution that is market viable. So a lot of it is very quantitative in terms of how we architect the competition.
But what we’ve also seen is that there are elements of winning teams that can’t always be controlled by just the scientific metrics. A lot of times, it’s the composition of the team, how diverse they are, and the unique mentality that the leaders of the team have in terms of their vision and their ambition. Those are parts that you can’t control for, but the prize model is very effective at also attracting the type of entrepreneurial, big-thinking individuals that actually tend to be behind some of the most successful companies.
Mitch Ratcliffe 10:40
Those big-thinking individuals often struggle with the transition from inventor. And to your point about the academic community often being the source of many of the teams that are competing, that’s not something that academics are necessarily good at. As part of