Peter Diamandis

He is the world's foremost expert in incentivized innovation. The art of incentivize smart and talented people within your company or those experts around the world to focus on solving your grand challenges. He has worked with Fortune 100 companies, government leaders and captains of industry over the past 15 years. In 2010 Diamandis is the winner of the Economist "No Boundaries" award for "meta-innovation - driving innovation in the way people innovate." He is also the winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Innovation, the Heinlein Award, the Lindbergh Award, the Wired RAVE Award, the Neil Armstrong Award, and the World Technology Award.

Diamandis inspires and moves audiences to action. His message is clear: there is no challenge that cannot be overcome. It is a matter of having a clear objective goal, clarity of what you are measuring and incentivizing the right community to solve your challenge. Using personal, in-depth and inspirational stories, Diamandis has been called "one of the best speakers ever" by numerous CEO-level audiences. He has received accolades from an impressively diverse list of listeners: Google, Microsoft, the United Nations, Facebook, TED, PhRMAs CEO Conference, Autodesk and Activision-Blizzard to name a few. Diamandis is a frequent contributor to CNN, CNBC and MSNBC.

Dr. Diamandis is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation (www.xprize.org), a non-profit focused on designing and launching large incentive prizes to drive radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. Best known for the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE (www.xprize.org) for private spaceflight, the Foundation is now launching prizes in four groups: Exploration, Life Sciences, Energy & Environment, and Education/Global Development. Today the X PRIZE has three active prizes: The $10M Archon X PRIZE for Genomics, the $30M Google Lunar X PRIZE and the $1.4M Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE. Diamandis and the X PRIZE have been hired by the following groups to create incentivized innovation: Google, Cisco, Shell, Progressive Insurance, NASA, US Department of Energy, and the US Department of Transportation to name a few.

In 2008, Diamandis co-Founded the Singularity University (www.singularityU.org)along with Dr. Ray Kurzweil, serving as the Chairman & Vice-Chancellor of SU. Diamandis speaks dynamically and passionately explaining how the rapid growth of key exponential technologies are empowering individuals and companies to do what only governments were able to achieve in past decades. The key exponential technologies include artificial intelligence, robotics, biotechnology, synthetic biology, embedded networks, nanotechnology/materials and human machine interfaces have the potential to transform industries and society over the next twenty years. Such technologies will drive a period of significant disruption or opportunity depending on the company's mind-set. Diamandis' ultimate message is that companies cannot remain stagnant. They must evolve or they will die.

Diamandis is the leading international figure in the commercial space arena, having founded and run many of the leading entrepreneurial companies in this sector, including: Space Adventures (www.spaceadventures.com), the only company to have brokered the launches of private citizens to the Int'l Space Station; Zero Gravity Corporation (www.gozerog.com) is the only commercial provider of weightless, zero-gravity flights to the public and to NASA; and the Rocket Racing League (www.rocketracingleague.com)is a cross between NASCAR and pod-racing from Star Wars.

Dr. Diamandis attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he received his undergraduate degree in molecular genetics and graduate degree in aerospace engineering. After MIT he attended Harvard Medical School where he received his M.D. In 2005 he has was also awarded an honorary Doctorate from the International Space University.

Diamandis has founded over 15 companies since his first year at MIT. Many of these are non-profits dedicated to creating change in the world. Peter's mission is guide and inspires the transformation of humanity both on and off the Earth. His personal motto is: "The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself!" In 8th grade, while living in New York, Dr. Diamandis won first place in the Estes rocket design contest.

Diamandis author of Abundance. The book focuses on how exponential technologies, coupled with the DIY movement and the on-line connectivity of the "rising billion" will enable an age of global abundance providing water, energy, food, shelter, education and healthcare in unprecedented availability for humanity.