There is a fundamental difference between working on a problem like this and doing design work. If you work on this problem you will probably advance our knowl

There is a fundamental difference between working on a problem like this and doing design work. If you work on this problem you will probably advance our knowledge in some domain and can even apply the results to other problems (such as network routing). Look at the groups that worked on the Netflix Prize. Most of the leading teams had academics seriously working on them. With a design competition you are basically doing work for free and the only one that benefits is the one giving the competition.