RIEDC, Providence Business News Honor 2008 Innovation Award Winners
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September 11, 2008 | Print this page | Share This | Email this page
The Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation (RIEDC) and the Providence Business News (PBN) honored the winners of this year’s 2008 Rhode Island Innovation Awards at a gala event on September 18 at the Kirkbrae Country Club. Launched in 2006, the Innovation Awards celebrate Rhode Island companies, organizations and individuals that have made innovation central to their work.
This year marked the second year that RIEDC and PBN partnered with the Tech Collective to combine the Rhode Island Innovation Awards with Tech Collectives’ Tech Laureates Night to create a statewide celebration of innovation.
“Celebrating success and bringing recognition to the state’s innovators is an important part of helping people understand why innovation is central to Rhode Island’s economic growth,” said RIEDC Executive Director Saul Kaplan. “The Innovation Awards and Tech Laureates Night showcase the state’s innovation talent and reinforce what I have believed all along: Rhode Island has what it takes to be a national innovation leader.”
What set this year’s winners apart from the many worthy applicants? Whether it was helping to turn Rhode Island into a regional hub for research-based industries, enabling online publishers to quickly adapt websites for mobile phone browers, or developing portable, easy-to-manage personal health records, this year’s Innovation Awards winners all recognize the importance of continually improving how they deliver services, create new products or catalyze new ideas.
Meet the Winners
Innovation Champion: Rhode Island Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC)
STAC was launched in 2005 and sustained by legislative statute in 2006 to make innovation central to the state’s leadership agenda. STAC seeks to assist state leadership in developing programs and policies that 1) increase Rhode Island’s research and development capacity; 2) encourage entrepreneurship and new company creation; and 3) enable all organizations to innovate.
Since its formation, STAC has initiated a number of key projects including the creation of a URI Commission on Research and Innovation and implementation of an Innovation Tax Credit to support new company creation. In 2006, STAC created the Rhode Island Research Alliance to promote collaboration across the state’s research institutions, attract additional federal R&D investment into the state and accelerate Rhode Island’s effort to create a knowledge-based innovation economy. STAC expanded the Alliance and its activities in 2008. STAC annually releases a set of actionable recommendations to state leaderships for policies and programs Rhode Island can put in place to become more competitive. The next set of recommendations will be delivered in January 2009.
Collaborative Innovation Leader: ER-Card
Founded by sisters Janice and Maria Gil, West Warwick-based ER-Card produces an online Personal Health Record (PHR) that gives patients and their caregivers full control of confidential medical information and personal documents.
In 1999, ER-Card launched its patient-centric electronic personal health record, the first of its kind. Combining technology with “hands-on” healthcare, the ER-Card leads a national trend in health care to improve access to medical records and give patients more control over their personal medical information. ER-Card technology connects members to an innovative, secure wireless electronic personal healthcare management service. Empowering the patient through improved communication with caregivers, ER-Card provides individuals a safe, simple way to guarantee professional caregivers have instant access to their up-to-date personal health information.
Innovation of the Year: GyPSii
GyPSii intends to be the mobile social networking company that matters in the next few years. Founded in 2007 by Netherlands-based GeoSolutions, a developer of location-based technologies, GyPSii is a consumer product for mobile and Internet-connected devices.
GyPSii allows its users to share their real-life experiences in the virtual world using mobile devices and the web. It integrates user-generated content, social networking, search and location-based integrated mobile and web applications into an easy to use experience. These applications enable members to create, upload, view and share pictures, video and text points of interest with a geo-tag (location data), find their friends’ locations and more.
Innovator of the Year: Chris Crawford, the Corporate Marketplace
Staying relatively invisible has worked out nicely for Chris Crawford and his e-commerce company, The Corporate Marketplace (TCMPI). Since 2000, when Crawford started TCMPI, the company has been growing at an astronomical rate by connecting online buyers and sellers of jewelry and other products.
Located in North Kingstown, TCMPI produces software to online buyers and sellers, allowing them to complete transactions on the web without a third party. Before TCMPI’s software, some transactions (such as corporate rewards and incentives) could take months. This local company’s software has helped millions of buyers and sellers reduce the transaction time to mere minutes.
Innovation Champion: Elizabeth M. Pierotti
Pierotti, an experienced inventor and product developer whose clients include several Fortune 500 companies, has been making a living as an independent inventor for more than 25 years. Specializing in consumer goods for the sports and fitness industry, Pierotti has designed and developed product innovations on behalf of Fortune 500 companies, distributors, retailers and individual inventors.
Pierotti launched the “Innovation Monday” program at Johnson and Wales University’s Small Business Development Center last year. Innovation Monday provides a clearinghouse and resource network to facilitate the development of new product innovations. Pierotti presents the series along with guest experts in market research, focus groups, contract and intellectual property law, business planning, marketing, engineering, prototypes and samples, manufacturing and more.
Rising Star Innovator: David Berube, MoFuse
When David Berube founded MoFuse (short for Mobile Fusion) in August 2007, he envisioned a simple, user friendly interface for mobile web browser users. Enter: MoFuse, an Internet application that enables website owners and bloggers to easily create a mobile-friendly version of their website.
MoFuse enables anyone to create a mobile website for design and brand consistency with a desktop website. Users can even utilize their RSS feeds to syndicate content from the desktop website ensuring the mobile site is always up-to-date with the latest information. MoFuse closed 2007 with 2,200 mobile sites in its network, and that number has surged to nearly 12,000 sites today, making it the fastest-growing mobile site publishing network in the world.
Student Innovator: Jean Merlain, the Big Picture Soda Company
As the CEO of the student-run Big Picture Soda Company launched in 2005 by students at Providence charter school Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center (the MET), Jean Merlain is continuing the success of the student-run company. Big Picture Soda was founded through an entrepreneurship seminar taught at the MET school where students Yesenia Mercado and DJ Hall quickly turned a business plan into reality.
In October 2006, they hired nine students to form the first management team. The following month, the team secured $10,000 in private financing to launch their company, Big Picture Soda. On December 12, 2006, Big Picture Soda Company produced its first bottle of all-natural passion soda in partnership with Yacht Club Bottling, hitting retail shelves (Whole Foods and Stop and Shop) in January 2007. Now, the company is working on expanding their reach into retailers, restaurants and caterers across the Northeast. But the students remain true to one of their goals: raising money for students to go to college. In March 2008, the company donated $2,000 as part of a check presentation to the Dollars for Scholars college scholarship fund of the MET.
