I think the genius he's referring to is the fact that they're trying to get educational institutions and students hooked on Dropbox, who could then go on to deploying Dropbox for the whole university (unlikely, but it could happen one day) and the students can go on to relying on Dropbox for their future projects, potentially upgrading to Pro at some point.
Exactly this. Just looking at my posts in my Facebook newsfeed and Facebook groups, this thing went insanely viral in a matter of minutes and people really are signing up for Dropbox and really noticing it (those who haven't been using it before).
The fact that they have a competition among universities and have the "top students" at each university is a massive plus in getting people excited about Dropbox.
Yep. Microsoft gave away free software for years (Windows, Visual Studio and Office suites) to students in order to get them excited about their technologies and familiarized with their development environment. One day, those students will graduate and be ready to join the .net (or what-have-you) workforce(). There are entire universities that only offer courses with Microsoft technologies (mine was one such school at one point), so it's not unreasonable or unlikely that Dropbox can infiltrate the education market.
() In some cases, though, Microsoft conditioned students to think that all software should be free... oh, the irony!
1. It has a good name and theme. "Space Race" is a genius choice due to its double meaning.
2. This is marketed more as a competition between organizations than a simple referral program. Neither is a new idea, but the combination is interesting.
Also, the references to the Cold War are interesting, though I may be looking into it too much. Personal rewards for referring friends is like capitalism. Group rewards for each school is like communism. With Dropbox, you get both! :)