Innovating the Future With XPRIZE's Elaine Hungenberg

In this podcast, XPRIZE’s Elaine Hungenberg explains how XPRIZE’s unique competition model sparks world-changing innovations, from space exploration to clean water solutions. In this lively conversation, discover how prize-driven innovation accelerates breakthroughs, hear about some of the most exciting XPRIZE projects, and learn valuable lessons from Elaine’s journey as a thoughtful disrupter.

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool’s free podcasts, check out our podcast center. To get started investing, check out our beginner’s guide to investing in stocks. A full transcript follows the video.

This video was recorded on Oct. 09, 2024.

David Gardner: The day before something is truly a breakthrough it’s a crazy idea. That observation comes from Peter Diamandis, the founder of the XPRIZE Foundation. XPRIZE heard of it? You might be familiar with XPRIZE for its bold challenges like sending private rovers to the moon or developing solutions for clean water. The prize part is millions sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars offered as a prize to teams of researchers and entrepreneurs that managed to deliver an innovative real world solution, a crazy idea brought to fruition. In competition with many others generally by a pre set deadline. Well, I’ve got a lot of cool friends, and one of my coolest is Elaine, the Senior Vice President of partnerships and impacts for the XPRIZE Foundation. Given that such a big focus of Rule Breaker Investing is on the Rule Breaking part, finding the dreamers who are also the doers, breaking the rules of the status quo and bringing amazing innovations to market. I know you’re gonna enjoy my lively conversation with Elaine Hungenberg, talking XPRIZE. Only on this week’s Rule Breaker Investing.

I view one of my jobs to be done every week for you, my Rule Breaker investing podcast listener, is to introduce you to friends of mine who will help make you have helped make me smarter, happier, and richer. Mentor teacher and entrepreneur Ran Stagin someone truly playing the Long game and business who joined with us last month, or Bill Burke, founder of the Optimism Institute earlier this year. I reminded you last week of Bill’s distinction between optimism and hope. Namely that optimism describes a belief that things will work out specifically because you believe the odds are on your side. This is deeply rooted in the American spirit, whereas hope, another beautiful and necessary state of mind is for those times when you hope things will work out despite the odds not being on your side, optimism versus hope, a distinction you can keep with you your whole life long. This week’s guest also comes from a deep Rule Breaker tradition. But in this case, Elaine Hungenberg is working in and among innovators, entrepreneurs, scientists, crazy people with crazy ideas well viewed as crazy the day before something becomes a breakthrough.

This past week, when reimplanting, refurbished stem cells into a young woman with diabetes type 1, reimplanting her own stem cells appears now more than a year later to have reversed, solved her diabetes. If this holds, what was previously a crazy idea could become a reality for millions of people. Worldwide. Well, I don’t know that the XPRIZE was behind that one, but certainly the XPRIZE Foundation, since it first popped up on the map in 1996, each shares this same spirit of breakthrough, but with monetary prizes attached, my friend Elaine Hungenberg oversees, all of the foundation’s partners and also measures impact. Elaine, it is a delight to have you join us this week on Rule Breaker Investing.

Elaine Hungenberg: I’m so happy to be here, David. It’s so much fun already.

David Gardner: I know, and we’re going to have even more fun than that. Let’s get started right away. Now, not everyone is familiar with the XPRIZE. I asked a random franchisee. Have you heard of the XPRIZE? I’m I random Frand Julia said, no, I’ve not heard of the XPRIZE. Here we go for those unfamiliar Elaine. Can you give us a quick overview of what the organization does and its unique approach to innovation through competition?

Elaine Hungenberg: XPRIZE has one of the most incredible models out there. It’s a platform that designs and runs global competitions to drive innovative solutions for the world’s biggest problems. First, we identify a grand challenge, climate change, all timers. Biodiversity monitoring, wildfire. We identify a challenge that we believe the normal marketplace isn’t going to solve or isn’t going to solve fast enough in the time that we need it to be solved. Then we create a prize with a monetary incentive, and that’s the price purse. That’s your carrot. Then we let the innovative minds around the world compete. In essence we crowd source solution. I think what makes us a little bit different and what I need to say to the world out there is that our challenge platform is different because it fosters open innovation on a large scale across industry sector, and it’s funded by private and philanthropic sources, which allows for a more disruptive outcome driven breakthrough.

We also use a rigor in our testing and validation that other price platforms and governments don’t do. We’re going to go set fires. Our health span prize is going to have teams in clinical trials. We have a rigor in testing. That then the risks the solutions so that they can scale in the marketplace after. XPRIZE has been around for 30 years. We’ve had 30 prizes in 30 years, over half a billion dollars in price purses.

David Gardner: That is phenomenal. I did not know it’s at that scale. I knew it was something like that, but I love it when we put real numbers to things. Elaine it occurs to me that you occupy a really interesting place, because on the one hand, as you describe what you’re doing. I’m like wait, isn’t that just venture capital? Isn’t there an entire industry? Isn’t there an entire culture set up to fund entrepreneurs with ideas? Then, on the other hand, a lot of people say, well, but that’s in part what governments do. Some people would say the government really got the Internet started. Apparently there is a gap. There’s a space in between the normal marketplace of venture capital, and then what we would ask of our governments. Could you speak to that a bit?

Elaine Hungenberg: I think there’s also a place when you’re talking about nation market places. When you’re talking about a brand new place, where even governments or the normal VC sector is hesitant to transverse. That’s really where the nexus of XPRIZE lives. It’s finding these areas where there’s hesitancy in the normal capital market, and we give them an incentive to play there. We give them an avenue to to show off, to validate, to be recognized in a way that then allows every other part of the ecosystem to come play too. I’ll give you an example and maybe we can carry this through. The very first prize because XPRIZE is very difficult. I think an example will help. The very first prize was and SRI prize. That was Peter Diamandis great idea to make space available to normal private citizens. Space was a government landscape. People didn’t go to space. There wasn’t even private space launch licenses. You literally couldn’t go. It was a landscape for China and the US.

Well, we decided that we were going to have a prize, and we wanted someone to go to space twice in 14 days. We dangle a $10 million price. There were 27 teams that compete in. They invested $100 million building their spacecraft just to win $10 million. The winner of the XPRIZE Virgin Galactic had an IPO worth over $2 billion. The space industry, the private space industry today is going to hit trillion dollars by 2040. You’re talking about a prize that completely transformed the world. That doesn’t happen without this type of model.

David Gardner: It’s such a great example, and I’m glad you started there. I needed to go to Wikipedia, one of my best friends on the Internet, my friend Wikipedia, to remind me it was 1996, and Peter Diamandis has basically said here’s $10 million. I’m putting it up. You’re so right to connect that through to today where we’re almost taking for granted that space is for all of us, and especially the private sector, which will always greatly outnumber in most countries, the public sector, and sometimes we forget that. But the private sector is massive, and it is now a massive opportunity, which we’re seeing commercialization take place in many different forms today.

I think we can look back 28 years ago to that vision. Of course, Peter Diamandis, who also started singularity University, a separate topic. We probably won’t go there today, but this is really one of our great entrepreneurs and visionary thinkers and not just though a thinker, as I really let off at the top here, I love dreamers, but I also need them to be doers. That’s something I really appreciate about the XPRIZE. Foundation now the model, Elaine, I keep underlining crazy ideas. I’m using Peter’s own words here. You gave an example of the original one, and you’ve lightly spoken to some of the other ones that you’ve done over time, but I love these stories. There are a lot of them. Give us another example of XPRIZE doing something special in the world at large.

Elaine Hungenberg: I have so many to choose from. This is probably the hardest question you’ll throw at me, but I’m going to go with Wild Fire Prize. The world is on fire and wildfire technology really hasn’t been touched since the 1980s, XPRIZE has come to this prize model of innovation in wildfire technology. The winning team statement is very simple and digestible. Someone has to create something that can autonomously detect a dangerous wildfire within 1,000 square kilometers, and they have to detect a dangerous wildfire. The tech has to have the machine learning to identify a dangerous wildfire versus an eco friendly wildfire versus a decoy ag fire. It has to have the machine learning and intelligence to know the difference, detect it, and then autonomously suppress it under 10 minutes without human intervention.

That’s a moonshot idea because then you can imagine you have a heat map of fire risk areas, and you can go place this wildfire technology, every thousand square kilometers. You’ve forever more not lowered and reduce the number of catastrophic wildfires. You’ve ended catastrophic wildfires. That’s a moonshot. That’s prize when you see these teams, we have everything from autonomous vehicles to Blackhawk, autonomous, helicopters being being applied and registered. It’s going to be game changing in this space, and the consortium that is funding it would make so many people really happy. It’s a philanthropic consortium of foundations of insurance companies, of corporations, of governments, and it’s when you can be mission forward and have that type of passion, that’s how you attract the right people.

David Gardner: Really appreciate that point Elaine and especially persuasive to me is that global cross border view of things. Venture capital can go anywhere, but tends to concentrate in certain places understandably. Then governments they’ve got their own sovereign borders that they have to respect. The opportunity to offer something global and have all humans competing for something good that helps human flourishing or helps our environment, which also helps human flourishing is really special. I was thinking about the Nobel Prize. If I have my math right, I think the Nobel Prize, in addition to being prestigious awards, I think it’s Swedish Kroner, but I think it’s the equivalent of around a million dollars. Now I’m not trying to create a spit match here Elaine but they’re only offering $1 million over there at the Nobel Foundation. It seems to me that you all are offering much bigger purses for I would say, in some ways, more practical hands on, really everyday huge challenges. Are you trying to disrupt the Nobel Foundation?

Elaine Hungenberg: No, we need the Nobel Foundation. Thank you for that question. We actually consider ourselves a bridge from research to practical application. We love the research that comes out. We love the research that says, hey, if someone could create this, I can trend out and model that it will solve XYZ. We lean on that research. We love that research. But what we do is we apply that to real life situations and rigor. There’s a chasm between research for research sake and theory and how it’s applied and how it works in the real world, and there is, and that’s OK, and we are just the bridge for that.

David Gardner: Really appreciate that position this bridge. I think you’re helping us visualize exactly how the XPRIZE foundation fits into into the world. Elaine let’s go to your work now. You’re the senior Vice President of partnerships and impact. Now I would say either of those on its own is a big challenge. They somehow have gotten you to do both of those things. Let’s start with partnerships first. You’re at the heart of connecting the XPRIZE to an ecosystem. You’ve got supporters, you have competitors. You have alumni. I’m just curious, how do you ensure that these partnerships don’t just create the possibilities of a prize but have lasting impact.

Elaine Hungenberg: David. The answer to this makes you and I kindred spirits I think. My answer could easily be all about my staff doing post prize support or engagement tactics or policy advocacy or knowledge dissemination.

Elaine Hungenberg: But I would argue that partners that I’ve had for years, that have followed me, that have joined me in other work that they’re lasting partners because of one thing, and that’s a shared passion. I assure you XPRIZE partnerships have a lasting impact by ensuring we have a shared belief and alignment of values. These partnerships often stem from a deep and mutual commitment to solving the same global challenges, which then drive long term collaboration even after competition ends.

David Gardner: Sure.

Elaine Hungenberg: I think it’s how I met you. It’s why we’re friends. It’s why we’re colleagues. Your passion, David, is what draws me to you. It’s why I haven’t left you since the day I met you. I have full confidence your foundation will succeed not only because the staff is just brilliant, but because you will lead with a passion that others, they won’t be able to turn away from. When you can speak with passion and you believe in what you’re doing, then your partners are partners for some short term gain. They’re there with you. It’s like you’re my flame, and I’m your moth, and together, we’re going to make financial freedom a thing, and we’re going to do it. I have no doubt. But it’s not because you gave me some brilliant newsletter or you had some engagement tactic. It’s because I believe in what you’re doing, because you believe in what you’re doing, and I can feel that.

David Gardner: Thank you very much, Elaine. In some ways, you’re pointing is something we might tap into a little bit later, which is the Motley Fool Foundation and part of the reason I know Elaine, although it predated this was she is on our Motley Fool Foundation Board, and we’re very honored to have her leadership and participation now log these several years. Elaine, describe for me when I say partnerships or partners, what is an example of a long term partner or a great partner for the XPRIZE Foundation?

Elaine Hungenberg: Oh, gosh, there’s so many.

David Gardner: I’m not trying to make you pick your favorite child here, but just give us an example of one of the awesome kids that you oversee.

Elaine Hungenberg: I’m actually going to think about research. We have a brilliant partnership with Rancourt. They are a think tank. XPRIZE is not playing a game where someone comes with us with a check and is like. Hey, run this prize because it’s going to be self serving to me. We want to run prizes because they’re thoughtfully curated. You and I, you’re the one David that taught me, have a Motley. My Motley is a thoughtful disruptor. You cannot have a thoughtfully curated prize design without a load of subject matter experts behind you. Rand is giving us those experts. They serve on our brain trust in every single one of our domains from space, to health, to learning in society, to biodiversity and conservation, and it’s their expertise that helps our prize architects design something of value. If the prize isn’t designed intentionally and correctly, don’t have it.

David Gardner: It feels like that language is so important, Elaine. As you explained the wildfire prize, you have very specific structures there. I can imagine as a language person, I know you’re one, too. Like, the words really count. I mean, if you have hundreds of millions of dollars on line and lots of competing teams, you need to make sure you’ve thoughtfully curated the exact. Like it’s basically the game rules, and you’re setting the rules as a game designer. I can imagine Rand as an incredible partner, I was just checking, again, certainly we’ve all heard many of us who love innovation are aware of Rand. I didn’t remember, though, it was 1948. This is a nonprofit global policy think tank. Makes so much sense that they’re a great partner for you. Let me shift gears briefly, staying on the same subject. But where does all the money come from? When you’re offering these gaudy prizes, whose money is that?

Elaine Hungenberg: Very kind hearted people in the world, whether they’re from government or otherwise. But I think I alluded to the Wildfire having a consortium. That is sometimes the case. Other times our large carbon removal prize right now is funded entirely by Elon Musk. He has generously give us $100 million prize purse for that. Our Health Span prize has 19 sponsors. Everything from the private sector to single ultra high net worth individual benefactors. Our water scarcity prize, which is our largest prize ever, $119 million in price purse is funded by the UA government and a foundation that they created within their government. It’s the gamut. I think that speaks volumes of XPRIZE and their value prop. If you can attract and actually bring into your tent, people from every sector, you’re doing something that many have failed to do.

David Gardner: That is phenomenal. We probably have people listening who are funding in some cases or might be interested in funding in other cases, Elaine. I’m curious. What is the minimum prize? What is the minimum amount of money that you would stand up an XPRIZE for?

Elaine Hungenberg: It’s thoughtfully curated, just like the architecture of the prize. That we want the prize purse to be enough money to incentivize the innovation, to reward that innovative mindset, and to have enough leftover where they can go to market potentially. Our prizes are very versatile. We have small term, one year, one million dollar competitions. We have five year five million dollar competitions. We have very large ones because the tech that they’re building is large in scope; and because we rigorously test them, this isn’t a white paper that they submit. Carbon removal is $100 million because they’re building massive infrastructure to remove carbon from the earth. It needs to be 100 million. Health Span is 100 plus million because they have to be in human clinical trials by your five. That is massively audacious.

David Gardner: Elaine, confirm for me something I’ve always imagined. Is this fun? This is unbelievably interesting. Are you constantly traveling hoofing it, like meeting with partners and having people propose new prizes? Or how do you allocate your time? By the way, we’re going to get to impact very shortly, but we’re still just talking about partnerships.

Elaine Hungenberg: David, you and I believe in the power of social capital, and that two heads are better than one. The partnerships that we have, every testimonial I get, after they’ve worked with XPRIZE is thanks for the freedom of intellectual thought. I will tell you that in day to day, it’s everyone has guard rails. They are working inside a box, whether they know it or not, most of the time. XPRIZE gives them this ability to think outside the box, to have moonshots, to engage in conversation, that is, let’s go farm on Mars yesterday. Let’s go build a battery that is ecofriendly, whatever it is. I get to travel. I get to visit them. I was just that climate week in New York City last week with large partners, YPO, and some of the world’s leading CEOs, and they were coming up with their own moonshots in a room. Doing so for the first time. Some of them, much older than I. Finally, thinking outside of their business model to be like, what do I want my legacy to be? It’s what you’re doing, David, now with the foundation. I would argue what conscious capitalism is also trying to do.

David Gardner: I really appreciate those connections, and conscious capitalism I’m always inspired by, because it basically is about creating a win for everybody. That’s what I think the XPRIZE Foundation is helping to fill that gap, because yeah, venture capital does exist, it is usually much more focused and much more immediate and not as inclusive. There’s not as wide a net being cast, but I think part of what I’m particularly appreciating, let’s talk about impact now, Elaine, but what I’m particularly appreciating is just that sense of possibility. You’ve already spoken to many of the world’s greatest needs or troubles right now and so that awareness, seeing the whole waterfront from your position, especially as senior VP of partnerships at the XPRIZE Foundation, but just XPRIZE Foundation, overall, is so inspiring. Let’s talk some about impact now, because for some reason, Peter Die Manison team also made you in charge of impact and so you’re thinking about measuring success, thinking, probably not just locally, but globally, and you need to make sure it’s positive change. I can imagine sometimes there are unintended consequences that can pop up as a consequence of a great idea well funded. But describe for me how you ensure impact is happening and that it’s positive.

Elaine Hungenberg: It’s complicated and it’s hard. Measuring long term impact is hard, I think sometimes where non-profits and foundations fail is they measure very short term gains. They do so because their grantor requires them to do so. XPRIZE is committed to long term gains. Committed might be a very generous phrase. We need to measure it long term because the impact we make is there’s a lag. Sorry prize, I just mentioned, I took 29 years to get to a trillion dollar industry. But I would argue, if you look at that, David, $10 million investment, trillion dollar industry 30 years later. That’s an ROI that’s unheard of. We really take into account what we call a price purse ROI. We understand that any change needs to have an incentive and it has to have an ROI.

We have a very rigorous theory of change model that’s been curated over 30 years. It has four pillars. I’m going to say them briefly. The first is innovation, the second is awareness, the third is validation, and the fourth one is scale. Obviously, the prize incentivizes innovation. Innovation is measured by research and development, patents, peer reviewed journal articles. The second is awareness, and I’ll give you an example. The very first carbon prize. We had a carbon sequestration prize. Carbon removal at the launch of the prize had only been mentioned, less than one percent in media. It wasn’t even a thing. After the prize, carbon removal today is a layman’s term. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to solve a problem and you have a solution. If the public doesn’t know it’s a problem, if the public doesn’t know a solution exists. Awareness for us is just as important as the innovation. Then the third is validation. We’ve talked about the rigor and testing. I think that’s something also as a VC or someone in stocks you can attest. It’s really important that your tech does what it says it can do and that it can do it at scale. We measure validation. We’ve catalyzed completely new metrics.

We had a progressive automotive prize. It was the first electrical car prize. At the point in which we were measuring and validating the tech, miles per gallon equivalent didn’t exist; so MPGE didn’t exist. The value of that rigor, the value of standard metrics in a field are very worthwhile to us, also. Then the last one is scale. David pre-prize, our teams have raised about $500 million. If you take the cohort of teams that have ever competed and you look at them pre-prize, they’ve raised about 500 million during and post prize, they’ve raised upwards of five billion dollars and so you talk about the incentive prize competition platform being an intervention, a catalyst to scale. It’s magnificent.

David Gardner: Really appreciate you sharing that theory of change. I like the four pillars. I like transparency, and so just sharing some of the numbers and goals and stories, Elaine, I know we’re going to do some more of that. But I want to shift now just to hear a little bit more from you because as much as I love human flourishing in a grand way, I also love one by one humans that flourish something I try to feature every week on this podcast. Elaine, where did you grow up and what were a couple of takeaways from your youth that remain, I might say, foundational to you as an adult.

Elaine Hungenberg: I grew up in a very small town on the Massachusetts, New Hampshire border to two loving parents who worked very hard and my twin sister. I think the biggest takeaways, huh? I got one. Takeaway number one, which probably has an indirect spillover to every other takeaway is to travel and travel not necessarily to far away new places, which I do think is important to meet as many cultures as you can, but to travel in your community. My mother instilled in me a deep rooted, take care of your neighbor philosophy. We used to do St. Vincent to Paul every Sunday after church, where we would go down to the basement of the church, get food pantry orders ready, and we would actually take them to the homes of the people in my community. I guess this all leads to empathy. I guess of my takeaway for as a mother now or as a friend or supervisor or a change maker in the world is empathy. I don’t think anyone does anything altruistic without an understanding and a grain of empathy in their body and so it can be taught. There’s research out there that shows empathy can be taught. I think that when you are able to meet someone who doesn’t look like yourself, who doesn’t speak like yourself, who doesn’t dress like you. It is changing in a way that is transformative. Then when those moments come, and a guy named David says, Hey, I want to uplift the low income world.

Elaine Hungenberg: You want to do it too, and that wouldn’t come if you hadn’t seen it.

David Gardner: Really appreciate those words. Thank you, Elaine. I was reminded, one of my favorite books on leadership is entitled On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennett, who wrote many books on the topic. This is my favorite of his, and I was just looking at this quote about travel and here it is. I know you’re going to agree but you triggered this for me, so let me share a great quote about travel. Here it is. Travel is another kind of learning, all the clichés about it are true. It does broaden, it is revelatory, it changes your perspective immediately because it requires new and different responses.

Elaine Hungenberg: Yes-

David Gardner: From you, travel is another form of risk taking and I really appreciate you connected that in to empathy, as well. I definitely am aware of other authors and people that I admire saying things like many college kids try to take that junior year abroad, as Warren Bennett just underlined for us, that is revelatory. But this person also said, more of us should just get out to our own country. Go out and see America, get to the rural places, the highways and the by way, and I really appreciate that. I’ve done some of that, but I don’t think I’ve done enough of that, and I definitely can see the benefits of that. Was that in your blood, have you figured that out as an adult? You gave a great example of serving others. Were you always traveling? I know you’re even go to be in Washington DC next week. I’m not going to, we could have had lunch, but I’m actually traveling. I don’t do as much as I’d like to. Do you travel enough, Elaine?

Elaine Hungenberg: I probably travel too much. My husband would say, hey, stay home this month. But my parents took me around the world on a shoestring budget out of a tent in the back of a station.

David Gardner: Wow. What?

Elaine Hungenberg: I was blessed to see so many national parks and meet so many unique people. I think that in a world where both parents work these days, and the familial structure is being stressed. I find travel to have so many benefits with children and otherwise, and so I do. I travel often and frequently, I bring my kids with me as often as I can, and you can you can already see the benefits of that across the board.

David Gardner: I so appreciate that point, a lot of parents are listening, and I had that incredible experience of once getting to travel with my dad who invited me on his business trip. He was a lawyer in corporate banking. It didn’t sound like the most interesting job to me, but I’ll always remember the fantastic luncheon where I got to sit feeling like an adult, I was probably 14, and just his briefly opening his world to me and making me feel included, opening my eyes. It was actually George Will was the lunchtime speaker at this event decades ago. But I’ll always remember that just because it felt so special to me, so you’re doing that with your kids and anybody who’s listening and everybody who’s listening, I hope that you’re giving that or thinking about that same opportunity. Elaine, I just think you have more cool stuff to show off than corporate banking to your kids. We first got to know each other, you were working at Operation Hope. Would you just briefly lay out a little bit about Operation Hope and what you learned as a professional working for that organization for some years?

Elaine Hungenberg: Oh, yeah. Operation Hope. It’s one of the best non profits out there. It’s a global economic empowerment, nonprofit that focuses on low to moderate income communities uplifting them with homeownership, and entrepreneurship, and credit counseling and financial literacy, and I learned so much working there. I oversaw their research institute, and I’ll tell you that I’ve been blessed in that. I’ve how bold disruptive thinking can actually address deep rooted systemic issues, and I think in a world that’s cynical, in a world that’s divided. I can’t even express how lucky I am, that no problem seems insurmountable to me and how blessed I am, that Operation Hope, and XPRIZE and the Motley Fool Foundation, they believe that anything can be fixed, solved, uplifted. Hope and belief. We talk about shift of mindset at the Motley Fool Foundation all the time. It doesn’t matter if you teach someone how to write a check or how to invest. If they don’t believe that they can build wealth, that they deserve to be rich, that they deserve to be happy. It starts with hope. For sure.

David Gardner: One thing that I’ve not gotten to do because I’ve never been on one of your teams, I’m just on a board with you. But Elaine, I’m curious, what is your own approach to leadership? Often, people who work around a leader say, she has a certain catchphrase, or a certain habit, or she conducts meetings in a certain way. I haven’t had that good fortune to be around you, but I’m just curious, what can we all learn from you when it comes to the day to day work we all do with you when you’re our leader?

Elaine Hungenberg: My staff would probably say she’s always telling us to experiment and fail big, and so I think David, you and I share this also. I want my team to have no limitations on thought, strategy, and vision. I want them to think that the sky is the limit that everything can be enhanced and improved, that they can try things and fail big, and they can do it in a safe place, and I will be their biggest champion. Experiment and fail big, David.

David Gardner: Well, that energy is coming through so well this week and thank you because you’re helping recharge all of our batteries. Here as we start the fall well, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. Elaine, let’s talk a little bit about you mentioned earlier your Motley and just for those who don’t know what we’re talking about. At the Motley Fool, we’ve always said, our employees, each of you brings your own value to work every day, and it’s really fun to hear what that is in a word or a phrase. My motley, so that’s the value I bring to the Motley Fool every day is, Excelsior which is Latin. I never did take Latin school, I always managed to dodge it but I know it means ever higher, it also happens for New Yorkers to be the state motto of your state. But I’ve always loved that word. Turns out, I’m not the only one Stanley of Marvel Comics fame, he was obsessed with that word. I just love it, we don’t need to talk about that. I wanted to talk again about your Motley, Elaine, because you expressed it earlier, and I knew it since you were a member of our foundation board, but thoughtful, disruptor, and I specifically, we’re going to skip the thoughtful part because, we could talk about that but I already get that. It’s the disruptor part that really connects so well with Rule Breaker investing. Why is disruption necessary? For a lot of people, it has a negative connotation, so I know you don’t mean it that way. A brief PN, if you will, to disruption.

Elaine Hungenberg: Disruption is actually a dangerous word, in my opinion. One, I love my Motley. I’ve had it now for almost six years, David, I think, and I would encourage everyone to come up with their own motley or motto. Disruptor though, it does. It’s often portrayed as negative. I want it to be positive, and I want it to be thoughtful because I never want to do more harm than good, and often the reason disruption gets such a negative connotation is that it’s not thoughtfully done in a way where you open your mind and lens to the potential indirect negative effects. Even what we’re doing at the Motley Fool Foundation, we want to do less harm than good, and I’ll give you an example.

When you teach folks about entrepreneurship, let’s say their middle income. Entrepreneurship is like baseball, it is a failing game, and they might put all their money on the line to fail and is that necessarily the best for them in the long run? Probably not. How do you work in the areas of financial freedom or innovation in a thoughtful way where you’re doing more good than harm? I guess that’s my question always and I hope that anyone who’s disrupting anything, they take a moment and they do a post-mortem, a pre-mortem, and they look at what their disruption is going to do and who it’s going to hurt potentially and then evaluate whether you disrupt or not?

David Gardner: A lot of people listening are change makers, not everybody’s a CEO, I’ve never wanted to be one myself. So a lot of us aren’t the CEO, but we work within contexts where we do have social capital, financial capital, where we do look to disrupt but as you said, Elaine, in a positive way, doing more good than harm. How about a little bit of coaching? I’m going to be asking you for some business lessons a little bit later. Maybe this is a preview. The first one, how about a little bit of coaching for people who are looking to create disruption in a positive way in their organization, but they’re not quite sure how to start?

Elaine Hungenberg: I love this question. I do this all the time, we have this moonshot workshop that we host, and number 1 thing you have to do is you have to articulate your challenge. Whether it’s a challenge in your team, your family, whether it’s a challenge of the world. If you can’t clearly articulate what you’re trying to disrupt, don’t try, and I mean that sincerely. Like, if you don’t know what the systemic cause of that challenge is or what is happening, then you can’t correctly infiltrate that, disrupt that, change that. Let’s say that you finally have your challenge articulated. I would really encourage everyone to go for a moonshot first. Now, that is not necessarily a personal goal, it’s not necessarily a milestone. I alluded to this, I was at a YPO event and I hope Steven forgives me for using him as an example. But he is a lovely gentleman who is creating peacemakers.

He wants to create peacemakers at a young age, at an adult age and he’s like, I’m going to train 250,000 peacemakers, and he’s telling me this. Everyone has the reaction you did and then I’m like, oh, that’s not enough. That was my reaction. Malcolm Gladwin will tell you, 3% of anything in a community stabilizes that community. For me, his 250,000 peacemakers was a personal goal and it was a milestone, it was not systemic change, it was not a moonshot. A moonshot would be, create 3% of the world’s population of peacemakers, and finally have world peace. I guess for me, it’s twofold. One, articulate your challenge really well. Two, push the boundaries of thought and work backwards. What are you trying to achieve? Make it audacious and bold as can be. Once you have that moonshot, of course, you’ll set milestones. Of course, you’ll set personal goals. But you have to know what your North star is, and that North star better be built off of a clear articulation of a challenge.

David Gardner: Really well put together, and I so appreciate that. You are being relevant to people in ways I can’t even know or describe, because a lot of us are hearing that, and then going to apply that to something this week or next quarter that all of a sudden, I hope will make things better, doing more good than harm, you described what the XPRIZE does, you’re working across nonprofits, foreign governments, private companies. You have a broad view of how to lead for impact. Well, speaking of articulation, I really love how you pointed out that articulating the challenge in the first place is so important to actually create meaningful and successful disruption. Let’s stick with the articulation theme, I’m going to be greedy here, Elaine. I’d love for you to articulate, if you would, let’s go with three, three short lessons from your career that I as an entrepreneur or a business leader can apply to create sustainable winning impact and change. Again, you’ve worked across nonprofits, private companies, we’ve talked about governments. You have a broad view of how to lead for impact. Let’s narrow it down and make it practical for me as a listener with three short lessons. Is this a fair question?

Elaine Hungenberg: It’s a great question.

David Gardner: Good. Let’s go with number 1.

Elaine Hungenberg: Number 1 is actually something I just alluded to. I would argue if you’re a business leader or anyone trying to make systemic change, you have to be bold and that’s being bold in your own sole proprietorship business, too.

David Gardner: Yeah.

Elaine Hungenberg: You’re going to sell shoes, don’t have your goal be, sell enough shoes to maybe compete. Sell all the shoes, you need to have some bold, audacious belief in yourself. David, your brother and you had this, you were going to write a newsletter at some point and then you were going to make sure everyone had it.

David Gardner: It was a print newsletter. We didn’t even see the Internet quite yet when we started as a paper newsletter. But yes, keep going.

Elaine Hungenberg: Yes. You wanted to mail it to everybody and you didn’t want to mail it five people. One be bold, two lean in. Lean in to everybody you can. You cannot do it yourself. You need to create a movement. A movement In your business, a movement in your social sphere. You need to do it together, and you cannot be afraid that by bringing people on, somehow it takes something from you. If there are more people at the table, the table is a better table. The boat rises together. By bringing people in, into your movement, into your moonshot, into your goals in life, you will go farther. What’s the African proverb?

David Gardner: If you want to go fast, go by yourself. If you want to go far, go with others.

Elaine Hungenberg: Go with others. Thank you, David. I’m so glad you aligned that.

David Gardner: It’s true. Do you agree with this?

Elaine Hungenberg: I agree with this wholeheartedly, and you will find that your life is enhanced, your business is doing better, lean in. That’s Number 2. Be bold, lean in and three, this one might be controversial. But be unapologetic. If you have core values and you leave them and you’re authentic, do things without apology and go after them, and you will have some people who disagree, you will make some people mad, but if you hold true to your values, do what you want to do unapologetically, and those would be my three.

David Gardner: Thank you. I really appreciate that and especially Number 2. Another way I’ve sometimes heard it phrased is innovation, business, really life, but just go with innovation. It’s a team sport. It’s increasingly true today as we have bigger and bolder challenges. It’s increasingly impossible just to be Thomas Alva Edison, and supposedly invent that yourself, even though Edison didn’t even just invent things by himself. I appreciate that point, Elaine. As we start to move toward the end, by the way, we have a BuySellOrHold game coming up. But let me just ask this question because I’m looking at your job, senior VP of partnerships and senior VP of impacts. It seems to me like there’s a balance there, or there might be a tension because on the one hand, you want to dream big. You want partners who can think audaciously and lean in as you said. On the other hand, you need to measure for impact. There’s one part dreaming and then one part doing and I would say my favorite people are those who can do both, but it does seem like not everybody is great at both. How do you manage toward both the dreaming and the doing?

Elaine Hungenberg: There’s such attention and anyone who says there’s no attention, they’re lying. XPRIZE has had three prizes, not payout. We dreamt super big and unable to deliver.

David Gardner: Give an example.

Elaine Hungenberg: Yes. Thank you, David. I will. Let me tell you an example of the Google Lunar Prize. The prize’s goal was to send something to land on the moon. It’s that simple. Landing on the moon is very hard. They extended the timeline twice. No one got to the winning team statement of landing on the moon. Fast forward, we held the bar super high. It’s saying that you tell your kids, aim for the moon if you fail you will land among the stars. We moonshoted literally to the moon, the teams didn’t make it. There were two countries who for the very first time had a lunar program. That’s a win. Years after the prize ended, iSpace just had a crash landing on the moon. News flash, crash landing on the moon, huge success, not a fail. For us, the tension is real, and sometimes it’s painful because they don’t reach it. But I’m telling you the tension is where the success happens even when it’s not achieved. If you dream big and you set that goal, let the tension live there and fall a little short sometimes. I promise where you fall is a heck of a lot farther than where you started, and we have to start changing the narrative. The narrative is wow, look at what we achieved, not holy smoke. Surprise in a payout.

David Gardner: Great example and really appreciate how we can win even when we lose, and that’s a major theme for Rule Breaker Investing. Losing to win is one of my favorite phrases, and it describes a willingness to take risk and to recognize it doesn’t always work out. In fact, if it always works out Elaine and dear listener, you’re probably not being bold enough, if you just keep hitting those short puts one after another. I so appreciate that point. Also, let me just briefly. You’ve spoken to our Motley Fool Foundation a number of times already, and I really appreciate you doing so. Elaine, you’ve been part of a team that has helped us craft that vision of financial freedom for all. Do you want to speak briefly to that? This speaks to an earlier part of your career operation, hope, etc. You have a better view of those possibilities than most people that I know, I include myself.

Elaine Hungenberg: It’s where my personal passion lies, is financial freedom, so many things stem from that people don’t even know, their health, their divorce rate, their ability to care for their children. If there’s one thing I want my legacy to be as a person, it’s that you uplifted your fellow neighbor, the family down the street, the stranger in the town over, to be on a financial footing where they were able to be happy. That they weren’t looking at their kid, that they couldn’t feed, that they didn’t not go to the hospital one day because they couldn’t afford it and pass away the next. For me, David, your foundation is everything I want to achieve in life. The foundation, the board, and David in particular, were so conscious of what to call it. It’s not financial literacy, it’s not financial empowerment, it’s not any of the coin terms in the past, it’s something much greater than that. Financial freedom is having the ability to take ca [inaudible] re and the ones you love in a manner that is unbridled and attainable. It’s not a mass amount of wealth quite opposite. It’s a standard of living that you just want everyone to have. It’s also not a handout. I get this all the time. What the Motley Fool Foundation is going to offer is a hand-up. Like we just talked about, when they get that hand-up, you’re rising with them. There is a boat that sails faster and farther together.

David Gardner: I think anybody who didn’t know Elaine before this week can easily see why we’re so proud to have her on the board, these many years of the Motley Fool Foundation and I’m also proud that you are willing to play BuySellOrHold with me.

Elaine Hungenberg: I’m a little nervous, I’m not going to lie.

David Gardner: That’s the way it’s supposed to be. That tension between dreaming and delivering, Elaine Hungenberg. These are not stocks, but if they were stocks, the question is, would you be buying, selling, or holding and a few sentences as to why you ready?

Elaine Hungenberg: Yes.

David Gardner: Let’s start with Number 1, artificial intelligence in impact measurement. If that were stock, today or going forward, buy, sell, or hold?

Elaine Hungenberg: Buy. Buy yesterday, buy today, buy tomorrow. There are countless, I’m going to flip it too. Buy AI for impact measurement and buy AI for challenges and identifying them. There is quantum, computing, and algorithms are going to change the way in which we can, for the first time articulate world hunger. There’s so many variables that go into challenges that the human mind cannot articulate because we cannot compute so many inbound variables. Just like I want to measure the impact, I want to know the problem better. Buy.

David Gardner: Love it, and that makes me even more bullish for the future. Thank you. Elaine, next one up, Corporate Social Responsibility CSR, if it were a stock, are you buying, selling or holding and why?

Elaine Hungenberg: I’m holding because I’m hopeful that the CSR, ESG they can do better. They need to do better, they should do better, they can do better, so I’m holding with hope.

David Gardner: Alright, on to Number 3. Let’s go with celebrity endorsements in social impact campaigns. Buy, sell or hold.

Elaine Hungenberg: David, this one is so hard.

David Gardner: It’s not supposed to be easy. Otherwise, the game’s no fun.

Elaine Hungenberg: Contrary to what I want to say, I would actually buy and I’ll tell you why. Generations, my kids, I would argue the one right under me. Is all about social media, and they do as they do. Why not have those celebrities be a North Star to good social things so I’m buying.

David Gardner: It’s a little bit of a lazy question for me, because celebrity just can mean too many things. There are amazingly great celebrities that everybody would love to have, and then there are horrific celebrities that you would never have on your social impact campaign. Maybe a little bit lazy. This next one, Number 4 continues, we’ll see where you go with this one, but specifically let’s go with TikTok right now Elaine. Viral TikTok challenges for a social good, buy sell or hold.

Elaine Hungenberg: We’re going to need a disclaimer, and I’m aging myself. I’ve never been on TikTok in my life.

David Gardner: Actually, neither have I, but half of the United States today is, so I think it’s worth talking about.

Elaine Hungenberg: I actually would sell that one and I’ll tell you why. Not because I don’t think it will have many followers, I would sell because it won’t be efficacious. My gut is that you could do more harm than good with that type of stuff and when those challenges come to fruition and they may or may not make the impact that you’re seeking, they might die off. Now, with that said, I’ve seen some in the past. What was the water challenge David for OS? That’s a beautiful thing. I love grassroots campaigns. TikTok challenges, the world of back and algorithms, reestablishing your own biases. I believe in thoughtful curation of things, and I’m not sure TikTok is thoughtful as it needs to be.

David Gardner: You have my vote, and neither one of us have been on. I’m not planning on going any time soon. I still have never signed up for Facebook, but I do like social media. I enjoy Twitter, and we all have our things, and things we don’t do, so appreciate that Elaine. How about this? Too more for you. You’re being such a good sport? I love asking you, top ones, but how about a softball for you? I think, Elaine space tourism if it were a stock, going for buy, sell, or hold.

Elaine Hungenberg: Buy. It’s a completely new discoverable space.

David Gardner: You and I talked about the importance of travel earlier. Is this travel you yourself would endeavor?

Elaine Hungenberg: Wow. I’ve never been asked that. Would I go to space? No, I don’t think I would.

David Gardner: You can still buy it without saying.

Elaine Hungenberg: I’m buying in space, not for myself.

David Gardner: The last one, speaking of competitions. I noticed this happens on TV sometimes people call it reality TV. I’m sometimes warning how real it is, but buy sell, or hold Elaine. I don’t know, shows like Shark Tank, the Apprentice, reality TV competitions for entrepreneurs.

Elaine Hungenberg: I would hold those. I think they’re great platforms. I don’t know the success stories of them per se, but I can’t imagine that anything that incentivizes entrepreneurship and has a healthy form of competition, that’s always an A plus in my game book, so we’ll hold.

David Gardner: Elaine Hungenberg, you have been most generous with your insights, your energy, your foresight, and especially I think your goodness. We’re really appreciative to have you on Rule Breaker Investing this week, to have you on the Board of the Motley Fool Foundation. But I would say most of all, your highest impact place, which is senior VP of partnerships and impact at the XPRIZE Foundation, which is an organization. If you, dear listener didn’t know about it at the start of this week, now you do, and it’s fascinating to watch going forward, and they actually pay out more than the Nobel Prize. Elaine has been such a pleasure having you with us today. Safe travels, whether to space or not, and look forward to seeing you on this podcast again down the line. Fool on, my friend.

Elaine Hungenberg: Thanks, David. Take care.