Google has launched a new Solve for <x> site as "a forum to encourage and amplify technology-based moonshot thinking and teamwork." This may or not be related to Google X, a "a secret facility run by Google thought to be located somewhere in the Bay Area of Northern California." Here's an example talk by popular science fiction author Neal Stephenson from an inaugural Solve for X conference held recently.

Solve for X is a forum to encourage and amplify technology-based moonshot thinking and teamwork. For thousands of years the imagination of storytellers has been a guiding light for people trying to change the world. In the last decade or two science fiction has almost fallen behind the work of technologists and entrepreneurs. For the sake of a more interesting tomorrow, we need to get the proverbial horse back out in front of the cart with our imagination professionals building a vision of the future to inspire the builders of the new world. Neal Stephenson is the author of the three-volume historical epic "The Baroque Cycle" (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World) and the novels Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac.