Back in August 2010, innovation expert and professor at the Tuck School of Business, Vijay Govindarajan wrote a provocative piece on his Harvard Business Review blog. What, he mused with co-author Christian Sarkar, might be a new way to tackle the issue of 5 billion people living in slums? Applying some of the thinking around reverse, or “trickle-up” innovation that Govindarajan had developed while advising Jeff Immelt at GE (see this report, How GE is Disrupting Itself), they wanted to apply a new lens to an old problem. The rest, in hindsight, is somewhat predictable: The concept met with a whole boatload of enthusiasm, persuading the two authors to try and move their idea off the drawing board and into reality. And so, the $300 House competition was born. Some eight months later, the deadline for entries to the competition is now looming; there’s $25k prize money while winners also get a two week trip to Alabama to build prototypes. Yes, all the usual caveats apply. Billions of the world’s poor may still be living in slums for some time to come. A $300 house might remain a fantasy. But the idea has challenged people to approach the problem in a different way, and has brought together a heavyweight group of interested parties. It’ll certainly be worth monitoring the submissions and activities of the initiative once the deadline has passed. And, as Govindarajan himself says, the dollar figure is beside the point. “This is about thinking audaciously.”