Home Featured Slider Anthill’s SMART 100: Winners revealed! (2010)

Anthill’s SMART 100: Winners revealed! (2010)

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They’re innovative, Australian and they’re changing the world, one idea at a time. Yes, it’s time to reveal the SMART 100, 2010.

What is the SMART 100?

In true Anthillian style, the SMART 100 is an ever-evolving, ever-improving experiment.

Designed to encourage, promote and support innovation in Australia, it identifies and ranks new Australian innovations by applying a combination of crowdsourcing, collaboration and common-sense.

Unlike your average awards program, we don’t lock a panel of expert adjudicators in a small room. Neither do we demand a thorough analysis of each applicant’s P&L statement. We don’t even request an historical snapshot of ‘runs on the board’ or commercial achievements.

This is because innovation is future focussed. It is about identifying and solving problems in ways that will change the way we live, do business and think.

What was the process?

Anthill readers were invited to submit detailed applications by completing open-ended questions, such as…

This innovation improves on what came before because…

The outcomes of these applications were amalgamated and short-listed to assemble the Top 100. These profiles were uploaded to the Anthill website for judging.

Applicants were invited to seek endorsements from friends, clients and colleagues to determine Anthill’s SMART 100 Readers’ Choice Awards.

At the same time, over 100 ‘maven’ judges were invited to to judge 10 applications each, using an online tool developed by Anthill to reflect a set of eight, individually weighted, criteria.

So, what’s a maven?

Most people define a maven as a trusted expert in a particular field. The word comes from the Yiddish meyvn and Hebrew mevin (מבֿין), with the same meaning, which in turn derives from the Hebrew binah, meaning understanding.

For our purposes, a maven also means a person who seeks to pass on this knowledge to others – an intense gatherer of information and impressions, the first to pick up on new or nascent trends and share them.

Mavens play a vital role in the commercial success of new products and services.

Unlike early-adopters, who are attracted to any new technology, mavens are more discerning. They are thoughtful in their approach to the adoption of innovations and that is why they are often turned to as trusted advisers.

A successful innovation may be attractive to your average early-adopter but mavens are the people who will bring a successful innovation into the mainstream.

As a result, Anthill’s SMART 100 are not chosen simply due to the novel or unique nature of the innovations but because of the potential of each to achieve consumer adoption and commercial success. (Meet the mavens.)

What were the criteria?

In addition to the the obvious (Is this innovation unique? How similar or different do you think the idea is to other products / services that are currently available to its target market?), Anthill’s criteria delved into areas of equal importance not normally acknowledged by other innovation award programs.

For example, Anthill’s criteria included the evaluation of the innovation against questions designed to measure its potential to self-market  (i.e. Is the innovation ‘remarkable’? Is it something that YOU would ‘remark on’ — i.e. talk about or mention — when speaking with work colleagues, friends or family?) and achieve adoption among its target market (Does this innovation respond to a necessity or a want? How important do you think this innovation would be to its intended user?).

Over coming weeks, we intended to reveal which innovations ranked highly against several specific criteria, in an attempt to uncover which attributes create a memorable and commercially viable innovation. The experiment continues!

Without further ado, the winners are…

RANK SCORE NAME OF INNOVATION
1 109 R&D Eligibility Wizard and R&D Application Wizard
2 108 biomineral agriculture
3 105 Beer Vault
4 104.6 SurgicalPerformance
5 104 DSS
6 102 Bed Bug Barrier
7 100 Creativity Talent Tool
8 98.5 Si-Toro
9 98 cone-head™
10 95 Advax™
11 92.5 Hungry Giant
12 90.8 Scarpar
13 90.6 The Loop
14 90.5 Smart Solar Desklamp
15 90 Imagineering Profit
16 90 Yoink
17 88 Unbooked
18 85.5 Papyrus Australia
19 85 Banquos Ghost Secure Banking Software
20 84.8 www.handleyourownpr.com.au
21 83 Invoiceplace
22 83 TradeInsure.com.au
23 82.6 Mailing Lists Online
24 82.5 Autocarlog
25 82.5 Geographical Conversation Mapping
26 82.5 Pulse Heart Transportation System
27 82.25 expanzPLATFORM
28 81 enableHR
29 80.5 Colour Accounting
30 80.3 Ifocus Group
31 80 myAnswers
32 78.4 Tummy Shield Cushion
33 78 BooYarr
34 77.5 intelliBuild by The Siemsen Group
35 77 BillsTrust
36 77 Clean Rain
37 77 Massive Rain
38 76.6 modpod
39 76.6 The Aurora Air Driven Fan Generator System
40 76.6 Tipsy Toes fold up shoes
41 75.3 3Dme — A Look Inside
42 75 Paycycle — Small Business Online Payroll
43 74.3 Joinlox
44 74 Continuous Mobile Mapping 3D (CMM-3D)
45 74 Works Central
46 73.5 Signmanager
47 73 Utilibill Lite
48 71 Watrwing
49 70.75 Intelli Fence
50 70.25 REDuce Falls Sox
51 69.4 LightSpeed Terrain
52 68.75 CARPARKING.INFO
53 68 Q In-Store
54 67.8 Design your own womens shoes
55 67.6 Health Check
56 67 Last Chance Ads
57 66.5 Neta Litre Meter
58 66 Nudge
59 65.8 Reverse Vending Machines
60 65.3 Carportable
61 65 Corporate Family Program — Aged Care
62 64.3 Stepwise Mobile for Cloud ID
63 64.3 yeahWare Core
64 64 Cursions — the online resource database for Australian teachers
65 63.25 Funnelweb
66 62.75 Ship2Anywhere
67 62.25 Cardlimbo
68 62 Atlassian Starter Licenses
69 62 Change2
70 60 Making People Count
71 58.6 QlikView by Inside Info
72 57.75 MySecureOffice
73 57.6 lazypatch
74 57 CoverMe
75 57 Pink Stuff
76 56.25 iFindConsultants.com
77 55 The Lab Team Composition — Experiential Team Building
78 55 TransitVision
79 54.5 Fryamz
80 52 Viocorp
81 51 Online1984
82 50 RTOmanager
83 48.25 LEVESYS
84 48 ImGreenPowered
85 45 Social Business Integrator (SBI)
86 44.75 Product Launch Management
87 43.5 CommunityCarbon
88 43 Octyl
89 43 T-shirt/Clothes painting franchise
90 41 Self-contained human navigation for indoor and built outdoor environments.
91 39 CAPTure Strategic Workforce Planning Software
92 38 Ice Bag Advertising
93 27.5 Klik2Konnect

Why are there only 93 innovations in the SMART 100?

Well… it’s a long-ish story.

As mentioned, the SMART 100 is an ever-changing, ever-evolving program. This year, for the first time, we decided to publish each application online to streamline the judging and also provide an attractive profile page for each of the top 100.

We asked applicants to submit their applications “as you would wish it to appear on Anthill”. This is because the promoted benefits of participation include broad exposure for the innovation, through Anthill’s online community.

The subtlety was lost on a surprising seven (yes, seven) of our centum and, when judging commenced, these seven politely (and extremely apologetically) asked to be removed.

Unfortunately, by then, judging was already underway, in full swing. Let’s just say, the show must go on (and be sure to remind innovators to determine their IPs strategies a bit earlier next time).

Want to enter next year?

If you think that your innovation is worthy of recognition, you can nominate for the 2011 program online right now. Simply follow this link to register your interest.