Advertisement

It's interesting to watch the way that the minds of those who have earned huge amounts of money work when contemplating the investment of that money.

It's also interesting to see how naive many would-be entrepreneurs can be when it comes to pitching for some of the cash on offer.

Well now, it appears, the successful formula that has made Dragons' Den a rating success is coming to NZ and Touchdown are soliciting for local candidates.

Now have your say Got something to say about today's column, or want to see what others think?  Visit The Forums While you're here, why not visit the Aardvark Hall of Shame and perhaps make your own nomination. 7

It will be very interesting to see who they get on the local list of "millionaires" to provide the funding and equally interesting to see how the calibre of local entrepreneurs matches those in the UK series.

If you've got a good idea and a business plan then why not give it a go?

And while on the subject of promoting innovation, regular readers will be aware that I'm a great advocate of the "prize" methodology -- such as that used to kick-start private space-flight recently with the X-Prize.

Well I see that over in the USA, they're at it again and this time it's the government who's offering the cash.

Titled "H-Prize Act of 2006", the proposal is to award up to $100m to those who come up with suitably qualified advances that represent "transformational changes in technologies for the distribution or production of hydrogen that meet or exceed far-reaching objective criteria".

Now some of you will likely be thinking -- how does this differ from a technology grant? Isn't it just a case of a government trying to pick winners with taxpayers' money?

Well no, it's not. There's a very significant distinction.

With a technology grant, as aimlessly administered by our own government, taxpayer money is handed out (as I've said before) to anyone who can pitch a good story and fill out a plethora of forms to the satisfaction of a few bureaucrats.

By comparison -- a "prize" is only awarded to those who have already proven their ideas to be workable and successful. There's no risk associated with handing out a prize -- there's a *huge* risk associated with technology grants.

But doesn't this make it virtually impossible for would-be prize-winners to develop their ideas if they're not getting the money up-front?

Hell no -- and this is where the Dragons' Den comes in.

If there's a huge prize on offer and you've got the germ of a good idea, you won't have much trouble raking up the capital necessary to turn it into a reality. Would-be investors will see that prize as their return on investment.

Yes, it would still be a gamble to bet on unproven technology -- but the gamble would be taken by the private sector (investors), not by a government dishing out taxpayer money like lollies.

So where the hell is our own government?

Why aren't they offering big purses for those folks who can successfully come up with solutions to the problems that are currently vexing us?

• Auckland's transport woes
• Excessive reliance on fossil-fuel imports
• The failing electricity grid
• A lack of generation capacity
• Crappy broadband service to rural areas
• etc, etc, etc.

Oh yeah, please visit the advertiser you see at the top of this column -- let them know that Aardvark's a good place to be -- even when it's free :-)

Good value?
Well over the past week it appears that those benefitting from the free advertising offer on Aardvark have received an aggregated total of around 2,500 extra visitors. That's not too bad as advertising goes -- hopefully some of those visitors have found the advertisers' sites useful or even spent some money.

Free Advertising!
Yes, while I sort out the issue of sponsorship, I'm offering loyal Aardvark readers the chance to have their venture advertised for free on these pages.

If you send me your 150x150 banner (no more than 20KB) and a URL to point at, I'll put it in a rotation to appear in the area currently allocated to sponsorship.

Because of my government-imposed state of impoverishment, I won't be charging for this exposure and there's no obligation to anyone -- but neither are their any promises ;-)

Drop me a line if you'd like to take advantage of this.

Did you notice
As eagle-eyed readers will have noticed, sponsorship of this fine blog/column is up for grabs.

Those who have already made enquiries about sponsoring Aardvark should hear back from me this week - and anyone else who might like to do so should drop me a line ASAP.

Tell us all and see what others have to say in The Aardvark Forums

If you feel that this is a good thing and/or you hold a "geniune affection" for yours truly -- then you are welcome to gift me some money using the buttons provided. In gifting this money you accept that no goods, service or other consideration is offered, provided, accepted or anticipated in return. Just click on the button to gift whatever you can afford. NOTE: PayPal bills in US dollars so don't accidentally gift more than what you were intending :-)

Contacting Aardvark
I'm always happy to hear from readers, whether they're delivering brickbats, bouquets or news tip-offs. If you'd like to contact me directly, please this form. If you're happy for me to republish your comments then please be sure and select For Publication.

Other media organisations seeking more information or republication rights are also invited to contact me.

Just add a couple of lines of JavaScript to your pages and you can get a free summary of Aardvark's daily commentary -- automatically updated each and every week-day.

Aardvark also makes a summary of this daily column available via XML using the RSS format. More details can be found here.

Contact me if you decide to use either of these feeds and have any problems.

Linking Policy
Want to link to this site? Check out Aardvark's Linking Policy.

Did you tell someone else about Aardvark today? If not then do it now!