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.