Awarding Innovation in Chicago

"Chicago is always changing, and technology and innovation are the keys to our future," proclaimed our not-as-popular-these-days Mayor Daley, making a still-welcome appearance at the Chicago Innovation Awards on Tuesday night at the lovely downtown Goodman Theater. Now in its 8th year, the Awards celebrate the creative spirit of the Chicago region by recognizing and honoring the city’s most innovative new products and services.

The evening was truly a top-notch event--well-produced videos, brief and appreciative acceptances by honorees, local luminaries in attendance, and quite a bit of fun. Our congenial founders and hosts, innovation firm president Tom Kuczmarski and former Chicago Sun-Times business editor Dan Miller, brought their own creative spirit to the proceedings, at one point donning track suits and "popping and locking" with the much younger members of Stick & Move Dance Crew. The stories of start-ups and worthy ideas made manifest were inspiring and eye-opening. As this Businessweek article notes in an overview (with an excellent slide show) of the winning honorees, "Innovation requires taking risks, and these are risk-averse times." But somehow these innovators were able to buck the too common current business paralysis. The winners ranged from a solo firefighter invention of the "Hero Pipe" to a mom-friendly product of a large corporation (Abbott Labs) to the venerable Art Institute with its new "Modern Wing." Other web-centric start ups included:Groupon: A website harnessing collective buying power to offer unbelievable daily deals for your hunger (restaurants), social life (dance classes) and health (acupuncture).
Every Block: Who knew you could get the news as local as your own block or zip code?
Visible Vote: This is an application that makes it easy to know who represents you, what they've voted for, and describes what's at issue. So needed.

Right now I'm looking through the goodie bag I got at the Awards--let's see, magazines, a towel from "rescue-vac," an actual "handi-ramp," a fire hydrant stress-toy from "Hero Pipe," a nutrition square, pens, flashlights, and lo and behold, a Groucho funny nose and glasses, courtesy of the Goodman Theatre, whose "Animal Crackers" is playing until November 1st.

Okay, maybe not the deluxe goodie bag of the Academy Awards, but an entertaining and inspiring event proving that innovation is not dead here in the midwest.