Smart 100 2012

Proving that smart, solid ideas can more than hold their own against flashy ones, BuildingIQ takes home the third spot overall in the 2012 SMART 100 for an innovation with immense relevance: a management system for optimising energy consumption in commercial spaces. The BuildingIQ EMS, which grew into fruition through years of research at CSIRO, takes care of two important elements of energy management at once. First, it supplements the standard building management system by monitoring energy usage based on weather and room temperature. Second, it adjusts these settings as necessary to strike a balance between efficient consumption and human comfort.

Searchwords’ Get Me Online innovation came to life when the founders saw the struggle for small businesses to move online. Websites are the cornerstone of the Internet but before Searchwords website development posed a time-consuming and costly problem for SMEs. Searchwords’ founders were itching to remove the costly frustration and solve the problem, giving every business a chance to participate online and get their business online quickly, cheaply and without requiring any technical knowledge.

in2loyalty initially came to life when I was at my local fruit grocer and they offered me a paper stamp loyalty card. Every week I shop there and as I don't carry a purse or wallet, every week I would forget my card and miss out on getting the rewards. As I always have my phone on me, I thought, wouldn't it be great if the stamp card was on my phone? Then I would never forget it, and would always receive the rewards.

Our co-founder swore off using expensive recruitment agencies in his (50-person) business forever. He began a mission to slash the cost and time it took him to recruit new employees. He initially found a contract recruiter who would charge him an hourly rate. He could outsource the process, but save 90% compared to an agency. Then his friends started asking for her details. There was demand for this model!

MOB created buildAR.com, which quickly became WordPress for the Augmented Reality industry. This helps publishers ensure they're not left behind by the mobile AR and Augmented Web revolution and makes it easy for you to create AR in minutes with no development required.

As a digital solutions company, we noticed several similarities in our clients' requirements even when they belonged to different industry sectors. They had full-service agency needs, needed to be trained and had comprehensive delivery requirements but low budgets. We built a service package from scratch that could provide all these services but in a process-driven system at a price that they could afford.

SEWater has been replacing old septic tanks on properties in sensitive areas with Pressure Sewer Units for 10 years. These units come standard with localised alarming to let property owners know there is a problem with the sewer pump. After a power outage in a small regional town caused the entire town to be woken at 4am by 100 units all flashing and alarming, our staff believed we needed to find a way to monitor and control the pumps from our office.

The purpose of this innovation is to publish a magazine rich in useful advice from real wedding vendors with real experience to help plan real weddings. It is also easily accessible as it's an e-mag and completely free for the reader.

As an ex-financial planner, clients were constantly asking me for help with managing their everyday money, and nothing was available. Budgets failed to address the problems. The purpose of this innovation is to show people how to eliminate their debts in the fastest possible manner, saving wasted interest and valuable time.

Businesses’ biggest complaints were that they were sick of the quick turnover they faced from agency-found employees, as well as the high costs. Paula decided to fill the gap with an innovative recruitment/HR business, where business owners could talk to business owners through a franchised delivery model.

Until USA Parcel Forwarding, Australians faced the problem of trying to buy goods from U.S. stores that would not ship overseas or had unreasonable shipping costs. Our innovation has given Australians easy access to the range and low prices of America’s online retail market.

We looked at the coupon systems used by companies such as Groupon that are bad for customers as they risk not being able to redeem an offer that has been fully paid for, and also bad for merchants as they do not get paid for unredeemed coupons which are kept by the group-buying site. We have removed the risk from both parties while keeping a revenue stream from the website.

The breakthrough came when a power box metering system, coupled with a modem, was designed and tested that could reliably send data to Smart Energy Groups' website, enabling an online dashboard to monitor, analyse and report power being used 24/7 by a customer's equipment, lighting and electrical appliances. Field tests proved this world-first could deliver what it promised: the opportunity to discover where and when power is being used, which enables business owners and householders to start saving up to 30% on the power bills.

I was looking for an unusual promotional item to sell at a pet and animal expo. While watching Man vs. Wild I suddenly had some inspiration: what if I could make eating bugs not as gross! So I took something really unfamiliar (the bugs) and put them in products that people love to eat. The products were so popular we decided to make them part of our regular range.

My son was diagnosed with severe eczema at the same time he learned to roll and could no longer be wrapped or swaddled safely to protect his skin. We then resorted to baby one-suit outfits with hand-covers, but these also stop being made with this most useful feature at size 00-0. Distraught and sleep-deprived from being kept awake night after night, I designed the first Bamboo Bubby sleeping bag and it worked!

We were working with a new water-enhancing technology and discovered it also had an effect on the structure of other liquids. This research led to early trials on the effect of putting diesel fuel through the same enhancing process. The far-reaching implications of improving engine efficiency and reducing pollution from diesel fuel were game-changing and so Biotechnix Australia was formed in partnership with the technology inventors.

We realised our Australian software for doctors and patients could easily be used by doctors and patients all over the world, and in the process help to solve the world’s biggest health problems! We know our software for patients helps the two-thirds of patients who need treatment but don’t receive it, and we know that doctors using our software could treat up to five more patients a day if they use the software. We wanted to take our service to the world, and do so for free.

Tripping through Europe, I came across the growing economics of "collaborative consumption" and an article in Time magazine about returned US servicemen and women from Iraq and Afghanistan. At the time I was busy writing about video game mechanics and their application to leading Gen Y and Digital Natives. Suddenly I had three solid schools of thought that, when married together, formed a very relevant, practical and easy model for leading upcoming generations.

I was travelling around Australia quite a bit for work, and I found it incredibly difficult to acquire local knowledge about what was on. It was easy enough to understand which really large events were on, but difficult to know what was on at a local level, and where I could find event information, it was relatively limited. The more I spoke with other people about this issue, the more I understood that this was a common problem that people experienced.

We gave our eldest son a cooking set but he didn't have a play oven to accompany it. With quick thinking, I turned the box the cooking set came in, into a cooktop by sticking some paper hotplates to the box -- problem solved and he absolutely loved it! I started to think about what other inexpensive toys could be created from a cardboard box...then came the idea of moving plastic parts to make them even more realistic and interactive, some stickers to make it more authentic...and the Imaginabox product line was born!