Human and Economic Development
A society in which everyone is able and willing to contribute to society. This category covers all initiatives related to maintaining and improving the quality of life for all people regardless of race, color or creed.
2011: Paytm
A full-service mobile money solution that includes Paytm Payments Bank, which is geared towards people who haven’t had access to financial services. Paytm Payments Bank includes debit cards, money market funds, and soon, business accounts.
2012: Kickstarter
Kickstarter campaigns make ideas into reality. It’s where creators share new visions for creative work with the communities that will come together to fund them. To date, over $250 million has been pledged to 24,000 projects. Kickstarter leaves complete creative control in the project owners’ hands and takes a per cent of donations.
2013: Bolsa Verde
BVRio is a nonprofit that develops market mechanisms to support compliance with environmental laws. It has built a platform to trade greenhouse gas credits and a system where the industry pays informal trash sorters who collect bottles, cans and paper and sell them for recycling.
2014: Bitcoin
Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority or banks; managing transactions and the issuing of bitcoins is carried out collectively by the network. Bitcoin is open-source; its design is public; nobody owns or controls Bitcoin and everyone can take part.
2015: Social Progress Index (SPI)
The SPI measures the extent to which countries provide for the social and environmental needs of their citizens. Fifty-four indicators in the areas of basic human needs, foundations of well-being, and opportunity to progress show the relative performance of nations.
2016: Ethereum
Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain featuring smart contract functionality. Ether is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. It is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, after Bitcoin. Ethereum is the most actively used blockchain.
2017: Patreon
Patreon is a membership platform that provides business tools for content creators to run a subscription service. It helps creators and artists earn a monthly income by providing rewards and perks to their subscribers. The idea is simple: let patrons pay their favorite creators for exclusive content.
2018: Bytedance
Bytedance is a technology company that specializes in the use of artificial intelligence to link people with large amounts of information. The company's flagship app, Toutiao, offers a personalized ranking of news, videos, and content from thousands of media outlets and millions of users and updates them in real-time based on a user’s actions.
2019: OpenStreetMap
Bytedance is a technology company that specializes in the use of artificial intelligence to link people with large amounts of information. The company's flagship app, Toutiao, offers a personalized ranking of news, videos, and content from thousands of media outlets and millions of users and updates them in real-time based on a user’s actions.
2020: Livox
The ability to communicate is fundamental to thrive in society, which means that millions of people whose disabilities involved an inability to communicate verbally are doubly disadvantaged. Livox is software that enables non-verbal people with disabilities and people with learning impairments to communicate and to learn.