Biggest Tech Innovations of 2011
Posted December 8th, 2011
If you think start-ups have a monopoly on innovation, think again. Some of the world’s biggest companies are among the winners of The Wall Street Journal‘s Technology Innovation Awards this year.
One company makes heart cells out of mature human stem cells. Another makes biofuel out of the sun. And then there’s the supercomputer that makes answers within seconds.
Technology Innovation winners included such big names as IBM, Novartis AG, Intel Corp., Abbott Laboratories and Xerox Corp. Runners-up included Hewlett-Packard and Yahoo.
Big companies have featured in these awards in the past, but the trend was especially noticeable this year.
“Historically, the rap would be that big companies do incremental stuff, but you look to start-ups for breakthroughs,” says Scott D. Anthony, managing director at Innosight Ventures and one of the judges for the Innovation Awards. “But it seems that big companies are increasingly doing really interesting innovation work. Large companies are recognizing that they need to approach innovation more expansively.”
The Wall Street Journal received 605 applications this year from companies, organizations and individuals in 31 countries. A team of Journal editors and reporters reviewed the entries and forwarded 155 to an independent panel of judges from venture-capital firms, universities and other organizations and companies. From that pool, the judges chose a total of 35 winners and runners-up in 16 categories.
The judges assessed the applications primarily on these criteria:
• Does the innovation break with conventional ideas or processes in its field?
• Does it go beyond marginal improvements on something that already exists?
• Will it have a wide impact in its field or on future technology?
Even though big companies dominated some of the individual categories, the overall Gold winner this year was Cellular Dynamics International, which makes huge quantities of human heart cells that can be used to study diseases and develop medicines.
Joule Unlimited Technologies Inc. garnered the Silver award for developing a more efficient technique for producing biofuel. And the Bronze award went to IBM for Watson, the artificial intelligence system that defeated two grand champions on “Jeopardy!”
Another noticeable trend this year: a number of companies were involved in innovative projects in the developing world, especially Africa, that could improve the lives of millions of people.
Novartis won the Health-Care IT category for a project that tracks medical supplies in Africa, while H-P and its partner, mPedigree Network of Ghana, were runners-up in this category for a text-messaging service that helps users detect counterfeit drugs.
“The mobile phone is a source of innovations in Africa, since access to a mobile phone is the first step toward development,” says Pedro Nueno, professor of entrepreneurship at IESE Business School in Spain and an Innovation Awards judge.
