The M.I.T. Media Lab’s proposition is simple: Break the rules or shake up the status quo, and you might win $250,000 in cash — no strings attached. No, it’s not a joke. Nominations for the lab’s new Disobedience Award are open.

“There are people doing really important things, breaking either the rules or sticking to their principles with knowledge that they will be hurt or punished in some way,” Joi Ito, the director of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in a telephone interview on Thursday.

“There are a number of really amazing people who just don’t get attention — we hope it will be someone who gives us courage like Malala,” he added of the eventual recipient, referring to the Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai.

The lab created the award after realizing that “in a lot of large institutions there’s really two ways you make progress,” Ethan Zuckerman, the director of M.I.T.’s Center for Civic Media, said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “You make progress when people follow the rules and work their way through the processes, and then sometimes you make very radical progress by someone who essentially says, ‘Look, these processes don’t work anymore, and I need to have a radical shift in what I’m doing.’”