The 2009 Buckminster Fuller Challenge begins September 18th! The call for proposals will be sent out to our mailing lists and posted here on the Challenge website along with eligibility criteria and other important details.

Each year a distinguished jury will award a $100,000 prize to support the development and implementation of a solution that has significant potential to solve humanity's most pressing problems in the shortest possible time while enhancing the Earth's ecological integrity.

The winner of the 2008 Buckminster Fuller Challenge has been selected. For more information on the winning entry, please click here

The Buckminster Fuller Idea Index has been launched!

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"If success or failure of the planet and of human beings depended on
how I am and what I do ... How would I be? What would I do?"
— Buckminster Fuller

Buckminster Fuller's prolific life of exploration, discovery, invention and teaching was driven by his intention "to make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or disadvantage of anyone."

Fuller coupled this intention with a pioneering approach aimed at solving complex problems. This approach, which he called comprehensive anticipatory design science, combined an emphasis on individual initiative and integrity with whole systems thinking, scientific rigor and faithful reliance on nature's underlying principles.

After decades of tracking world resources, innovations in science and technology, and human needs, Fuller asserted that options exist to successfully surmount the crises of unprecedented scope and complexity facing humanity – he issued an urgent call for a design science revolution to make the world work for all.



The Buckminster Fuller Challenge seeks submissions of design science solutions within a broad range of human endeavor that exemplify the trimtab principle. Trimtabs demonstrate how small amounts of energy and resources precisely applied at the right time and place can produce maximum advantageous change.

Solutions should be:

• Comprehensive — a clear demonstration of holistic systems thinking.
  
• Anticipatory — projectively tracking critical trends and needs; identifying and assessing long term consequences of proposed solutions.
  
• Ecologically responsible — reflective and supportive of nature's underlying processes, patterns and principles.
  
• Verifiable — able to withstand rigorous empirical testing.
  
• Replicable — capable of being readily undertaken by others.
  
• Achievable — likely to be implemented successfully and broadly adopted.

» How to Enter