Smart 100 2011

We wanted to create something that connected to the average Australian. The financial planning industry ignores people who have simple goals and not large amounts of money -- we wanted to help and connect with people from all walks of life.

Daniel He, an optometrist, first worked in an optical store in the late 1990s selling eyewear. Too often a customer was dissatisfied with one or more aspect of shape, colour, material or size of the glasses they purchased. Most compromised and settled for something that was mass-produced. Now, a decade on, this problem was a recurring theme. So he out to change this, in an industry dominated by multinational companies.

I was trying to improve my surfing and kept on falling off my skateboard. I studied the biomechanical movements and pivot points of the human body and designed a prototype swingboard which was effective and safe to use. Once we ironed out some of the issues with the prototype we invited a sports physiologist along to make sure we were not going to injure a user. The physiologist was amazed at the freedom of movement and fitness benefits for general users in the fitness market for Core Strength Training, Balance Training and Rehabilitation.

Every year, we receive a handful of requests from disappointed business owners seeking a reason why their innovation didn't make it into the SMART 100. This year, we've decided to take the most efficient and least painful approach and attempt to answer this question by way of blog, by providing four of the most common reasons.

I was trying to find helpful and useful toys for my nieces and nephew who had too many plastic toys. I was tired of watching the kids devote only a few minutes to an expensive Transformers toy. I wanted to give them products that were also eco-friendly and guilt-free (i.e. less contribution to landfill).

After six years of success as Ecowash Mobile, we conducted market research into the consumer perception of the brand. We found that consumers were more interested in our technology. As a result of this research, we re-positioned our service and re-branded based on the unique and exclusive liquid nanotechology via which we provide our service. Whilst still having the same environmental credentials, the new Nanotek brand better conveys not only the technology but the unmatched quality of the service.

Some members of this team were trying to build an Artificial Intelligence 'Learning' search engine that required plenty of computing power. After seeing what was out in the market, the idea to build a High Performance Cloud computing company was born.

I was working as a Graduate Engineer on the construction of an onshore LNG Gas facility. We had to maintain extremely high safety standards whilst working at height during construction. I was surprised by the lack of innovation in the safety products available at the time. None of the existing products were able to provide the levels of freedom and safety that we required. I couldn't help but think that there must have been a better solution, which is when I came up with the fundamental concept for the T-Line -- a concept that remains today in the current version.

Inventor Don Richardson was approached by AFGC with a problem that its food industry members were confronting; it had to do with improving and monitoring the refrigerated distribution of perishables -- foods and pharma products -- during distribution. The industry wanted a more responsive way to ensure their product food safety. Richardson was then granted patents in numerous OECD countries for its unique business process.

My mum always used to catch the initial volume of cold water discharged from her shower in a bucket and use it on the garden, but a few years ago, when she hit her mid-70s, she abandoned the practice because it was just too much hard work. With water restrictions also in place due to the drought, I decided to invent a better way to collect and use that water. The Cullector is the result of that inspiration, although it’s taken several years and 14 prototypes to perfect it!

Olivia Wood was driven by what she saw as emerging trends in "Education/Entertainment" consumer products and the proliferation of personal technology in all aspects of modern life. iMinds has carved a strong niche in the new publishing space, securing all major eBook and eAudioBook distributors and having strong sales uptake from the new information consumer...dedicated to getting the most from their tech devices.

One night I called all the kids for dinner and asked them to bring the cups they were using to the table. They all walked past several cups on the kitchen counter and grabbed a new one from the cupboard. Right then I wished I had a better way to manage all the cups floating around our house. Keeping track of cups in a busy family can sometimes become unmanageable resulting in abandoned cups, spreading of illness and arguments.

After working with companies that needed to store massive and growing data collections on computers that could no longer match their growth in I/O capacity each year, we realised that eventually all these companies must resort to parallel processing of their large data collections. They simply have no other direction to go in. Our approach was to bring together the best available technologies to make the world's fastest MPP system that permits simple expansion beyond the size of the largest systems in operation in the world today.

I became fascinated by Khao Larm when living in Taiwan. I wanted to try my own recipes in it, but never saw it being prepared. Moving to Thailand, I am fortunate to have a neighbour, a lovely old lady we call Yai Yu (Aunty Yu), who prepares Khao Larm by the traditional method. Having observed Yai Yu making Khao Larm by the traditional method for some years, I wanted to use my industrial design and ethnotechnology studies to solve some of the apparent problems.

A potential client, the British Ministry of Defence, was having problems with the extreme weather conditions in Afghanistan affecting their pump systems and regulatory changes meant that they could not leave their sewage at the site of their camps. We have had 25 years of experience using vacuum technology for sewage networks in Australia and so managed to come up with a way to containerise the system and handle the conditions.

Aviator is a venture spun out of the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia. Leveraging UTS’ proprietary software around thought classification for controlling electronic devices, the venture is developing a wheelchair control solution to respond to the needs of the severely disabled and paralysed.

Whilst in my hotel room at night I would search Google for "The best coffee in..." the city where I was staying. I found this process exhausting and it usually came up with mediocre results. So a couple of years ago upon arriving back in Melbourne I had a chat with coffee-loving friends James Crawford (Web Developer) and Adam Lowe (Psychologist) and the concept of Beanhunter was born.

The three of us where completing our postgraduate studies at The University of Melbourne. We started to work out what could be done to make it easier for people to create diagrams that wouldn't just be pictures but could represent the real world. We entered the Melbourne University Entrepreneur Challenge (MUEC) and with our business plan and pitching won second prize.

Shortcuts realised that whilst the Internet offers significant revenue opportunities, less than one fifth of Australian salons have an online presence -- and are missing out on potential business. Already enabling salons to take bookings online, Shortcuts wanted to drive more business to salons at minimal risk and cost to them, and enable potential clients to find Shortcuts salons anywhere, anytime.

The purpose of this innovation is to efficiently and effectively raise capital for early-stage businesses needing growth capital. This is done by increasing the competence of those seeking capital and matching them to those with capital to invest.