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** For Immediate Release **

Contact: Sharifah Taqi
Phone: 718 290 9283
Email: challenge@bfi.org

10 DAYS LEFT TO ENTER + SEVEN JURORS ANNOUNCED



April 2, 2013, New York City - With only ten days left to enter the 2013 Buckminster Fuller Challenge, the international prize program awarding $100,000 to support the development and implementation of a solution that has significant potential to solve humanity's most pressing problems, the Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI) is proud and very honored to announce that the following seven internationally recognized sustainability leaders will join us this year to serve as jurors. These individuals have pioneered whole-systems innovation in the fields or art, agriculture, design, science, education, finance, geometry, business management and the media. The winner will be announced at a conferring ceremony in November.

THE 2013 JURORS INCLUDE:

JAY BALDWIN ("JB") is an industrial designer currently teaching at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, (CCA), lecturing and consulting widely, and writing a book on managing the darker side of technology. He occasionally worked under, for, and with Buckminster Fuller for 33 years and also authored BuckyWorks - Buckminster Fuller's Ideas for Today (Wiley, 1996).

AMY EDMONDSON is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School. Edmondson's research examines leadership, learning and innovation in teams and organizations, and has been published in numerous academic and managerial articles. She also worked for Buckminster Fuller and wrote A Fuller Explanation: The Synergetic Geometry of R. Buckminster Fuller (1987).

JOHN ELKINGTON is a world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development. Mr Elkington is Founding Partner & Executive Chairman of, Volans, a consultancy and think-tank driving market-based solutions to the future's greatest challenge. John is also the author or co-author of 18 books, a columnist and public speaker. Visit Breakthough Capitalism to read about the program created from the scenarios outlined in his book The Zeronauts - Breaking though the sustainability barrier, and follow John's twitter handle @volansjohn.

JASON MCLENNAN is the CEO of the Cascadia Green Building Council, the Pacific Northwest's leading organization in the field of green building and sustainable development and the author of the Living Building Challenge, and co-creator of Pharos, the most advanced building material rating system in North America. He is also the winner of the 2012 Buckminster Fuller Challenge, and an international thought leader in the green architecture movement.

ANDREW REVKIN has covered science and the environment for 30 years in newspapers, magazines, three books, documentaries and his New York Times blog, Dot Earth, winning the country's top science journalism awards multiple times. He was a staff reporter at The Times from 1995 to 2009. Mr. Revkin has been a senior editor of Discover, a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, and a senior writer at Science Digest. Since 2010, he has been senior fellow for environmental understanding at Pace University's Pace Academy for Applied Environmental Studies.

PEDRO SANCHEZ is the director of the Earth Institute's Tropical Agriculture and Rural Environment Program at Columbia University and a senior research scholar. Sanchez, who served as director general of the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, from 1991 to 2001, and as co-chair of the UN Millennium Project Hunger Task Force, is committed to making Africa "get out of hunger" in the next 10 to 20 years. He is also the 2002 World Food Prize laureate and a 2004 MacArthur Fellow.

LINDA WEINTRAUB is an artist, curator, and author of To Life! Eco Art In Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet, In the Making: Creative Options for Contemporary Art, Art on The Edge and Over: Searching for Art's Meaning in Contemporary Society, and the Avant-Guardians series. She was the Henry Luce Professor of Emerging Art at Oberlin College and director of the museum at Bard College.

Stay tuned for more updates in the coming weeks and don't wait to apply! The Challenge is more exciting than ever with BFI's growing partnerships and additional opportunities for entrants, so help us get the word out by sharing this notice with your network or individual practitioners you think should enter. Read about the last five winners and their extraordinary work, download the full Call for Proposals, and APPLY!

DEADLINE IS FRIDAY APRIL 12, 2013, 5pm EST.




WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR


Winning the Buckminster Fuller Challenge requires more than inserting a great stand-alone innovation into a complex 'problem space'. We are looking for holistic strategies that demonstrate a clear grasp of 'the big picture', focused on a well-defined need of critical importance. If for example, your solution emphasizes a new design, material, process, service, tool, technology, or any combination, it is essential that it be part of an integrated strategy that incorporates key social, environmental, and economic factors.

We are seeking visions that put forth what Fuller called a preferred state model - one that aims to design a set of initial conditions from inception in order to create over time, the most desirable, sustainable outcome.

We are seeking solutions that embody what Fuller referred to as the trimtab principle - demonstrating that a relatively small initiative inserted into a system at the right time and place can achieve maximum leverage for advantageous change.


Entries can span the spectrum of scale - from macrostrategies restoring and maintaining ecosystems necessary for life on earth to thrive, to community-based ventures that have global relevance. Entries can also span the spectrum of development stage - from well formulated concept, to proof-of-concept, to proven track record. Competence and commitment of the team behind the idea is more important.

Entries must also meet the following criteria:

VISIONARY put forth an original idea that creatively addresses a critical need or synthesizes existing ideas into a new strategy.

COMPREHENSIVE apply a "whole-systems" approach to all facets of the design and implementation process; aim to simultaneously address the root cause and multiple goals, requirements, conditions and factors.

ANTICIPATORY factor in critical future trends and needs as well as the projected impacts of implementation in the short and long term.

ECOLOGICALLY RESPONSIBLE reflect nature's underlying principles while enhancing the Earth's life-support systems.

FEASIBLE rely on current technology and existing resources backed by a solid team capable of implementing the project.

VERIFIABLE able to withstand rigorous empirical testing and makes authentic claims.

REPLICABLE able to be adapted to similar conditions elsewhere.
THE INSPIRATION


Buckminster Fuller's prolific life of scientific, artistic and design research + invention was driven by his intention to design new systems in which humanity could live at a level of freedom, comfort and dignity without negatively impacting the Earth's life support systems. He established for himself a set of rigorous design principles, ecological aesthetics, and insights into the fundamental 'pattern integrities' of the Universe. This approach guided his efforts to envision and render radically new solutions to some of the most entrenched and complex global problems.

Fuller demonstrated that by dramatically increasing the performance of each and every invested resource we can surmount the complex crises facing humanity and maintain the planet's carrying capacity. He understood that our option to realize this potential hinges directly on an unwavering commitment to individual initiative, personal integrity, and faithful reliance on nature's underlying principles.







Fuller issued an urgent call for a design science revolution "to make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone".

Answering this call is what the Buckminster Fuller Challenge is all about.




ENTRIES ACCEPTED:
March 1st - April 12th, 2013

TO ENTER, GO TO:
challenge.bfi.org/enter

FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT:
challenge.bfi.org



Schedule for the 2013 Cycle

March 1, 2013: Begin accepting online applications
April 12, 2013: 5pm EST, DEADLINE for submissions to the 2013 Buckminster Fuller Challenge
August: Semi-Finalists Announced
October: Jury Deliberations
October: Finalists Announced
November 2013: Winner Announced and Conferring Ceremony held at Cooper Union

** Schedule subject to change