At the University of Technology, Sydney, Professor Hung Nguyen and his research team are developing a system operates a wheelchair with nothing but brain waves. The tech can be revolutionary for people with severe disabilities. It earned position No. 3 in this year’s Anthill SMART 100.
An NSW-based company, Flovac, has developed a deployable sewage treatment system that could answer the health need of military encampments and emergency refugee camps. The products earned the runner-up spot in Anthill’s SMART 100.
Gretha Oost has the heart of an environmentalist and the mind of a marketer. She pondered Australians’ propensity to drink water from bottles when, by and large, water from their taps are perfectly safe. Her solution earned top honors in Anthill’s SMART 100 for 2011.
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 won the tender to handle an Event for 500 people with no experience other than a sheer will to deliver an awesome experience. After much frustration with the industry and service levels, supported by a programming background I set out to change the world. I wanted a system with no boundaries of language, currency, time or location. A platform that could give productivity back to organisations and reduce costs by improving processes.
The transport regulators and state road authorities decided that Line Haul Transport Operators must operate their business to a stringent set of complex Fatigue Laws in 2009. These laws fall under a strict Chain of Responsibility (CoR) legislation designed to make heavy vehicle fleets safer. Unfortunately the fatigue laws that have been implemented, although great in theory, are impossible to manage in practice, in manual format as a work diary.
This innovation initially came to life when Rod, keen environmentalist traveler and rideshare advocate, met Ross, expert online marketplace developer. Rod was certain that creating a carpool and rideshare network as complete and functional as a bus network was a real possibility. Ross, bringing his knowledge with online marketplaces, developed the execution which made it a reality.
We realised many businesses were failing to take full advantage of the power of software to improve their business, despite a compelling business case and many options available. We explored many different ways to serve end-users directly and get paid by them, but eventually concluded they generally lacked enough budget for software selection support. At the same time, we were being inundated with approaches from software vendors keen to find new customers. The light bulb went on…
We realised that many coupon or daily deal sites bombard users with unwanted offers which often become unmanageable and turn users away. Why not create a mobile app that allows users to pre-select the brands and types of deals they would like to receive? It creates a win-win situation with users receiving targeted offers and brands receiving higher conversion rates.
I was sitting on a beach in Dili, East Timor. While the sun was setting, I realised two things: 1) Physiotherapists are placing increasing emphasis on education and exercise programs in injury management; 2) People in remote areas should not miss out on valuable personalised injury information. The idea for an online injury assessment and management clinic was born.
Brothers David and Barry O’Driscoll started Brightgreen, an LED lighting company developing products that match a halogen on brightness while using only a quarter of the power and lasting up to fifteen times longer. Brightgreen’s latest cutting-edge product is the DR700 — the world’s first LED downlight replacement bulb to match the brightness of an average halogen and to be compatible with all existing transformers and dimmers. This means that LED replacement bulbs are now simple, fast and hassle-free to install, making them ideal for a mass market.
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!
Founders Sarah Taylor and Jeff Dusting realised how time-consuming and unsatisfactory it was to locate, book, and pay for home, health and beauty services, and how few service providers had access to efficient low-cost online trading. Unbooked seeks to create an online marketplace for the sale of available time-based services.
After generations of disadvantage in marginalised Australian communities, Evolve director Kerry Grace realised there must be a better way. Kerry met with colleagues in the Nambucca Valley and commenced developing the ‘architecture’ to make significant and sustainable change in the community.
We had problems keeping our Twitter accounts uncluttered from users that added little value to our tweet stream. We also were having problems seeing who we were following and who was not following us back, and vice versa. There was no easy way to bulk unfollow people based on a set of criteria, so we developed a web-based application that would assist in improving the signal/noise ration of a user’s Twitter account.
The purpose of this innovation is to make internet advertising in search engines more efficient and cost-effective for both searchers and advertisers. DynamicCreative’s ability to incorporate live pricing that matches inventory, for large scale campaigns, providing higher Quality Score, increased relevancy and significantly improved ROI.
We discovered there were no online platforms/marketplaces that empower young or emerging Australian designers to reach their goals. The purpose of this innovation is to empower young and emerging Australian designers.
Be There came about from a combination of the Black Saturday bushfires, the devastating flooding that occurred in Queensland, and the feedback from Silicon Valley for Jasondb, our new NOSQL database. Be There was an initiative designed to allow people access to information in real time from a combination of “verified” organisations as well as crowdsourced individuals.
My professional background as an accountant collided with small business ownership when I bought a surf shop. I knew I needed to get my tax completed just like any small business owner, so I took my “folder” to my tax accountant. He was gobsmacked by how organised my tax information was. I was also developing my own clientele as an accountant, and clients’ tax accountants commented on how easy it was to complete their tax returns as all the information was at hand, so I researched producing a commercial version of the system I was using for myself and clients.
Founder Dale Carr noticed how many website owners were complaining about declining revenues they were seeing from online adverts placed on their web pages (especially with Google Adsense). Digging deeper, Carr identified a trend called ad-blindness where web visitors were now so used to the look and feel of online adverts that they were totally ignoring them. Carr set about working on an advertising solution where the display method would be more engaging meaning higher click-throughs, better web-owner revenues and higher quality leads for advertisers.
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