Between the Second City actors taking innovation to its most raw form – improvisation, Beau Wrigley’s call to adopt innovation beyond business into other aspects of one’s life, and Dan Miller and Tom Kuczmarski’s Blue’s Brothers-themed introduction, the 10th annual Chicago Innovation Awards was a marked success.
This event gave awards to ten of the area’s top innovators and highlighted the release of the book, Innovating…Chicago-Style. The book chronicles the last 10 years of Chicago Innovation Awards winners.
Coming from a music background, I am duly impressed by the act of creation. Innovation takes that act into a business context, where it creates value for investors and consumers, and indeed society as a whole. In the book, 27 of the products and services featured have generated over $20 billion in revenue.
Miles White, chairman of Abbott Laboratories (a 2011-2012 constituent company of the Ocean Tomo 300® Patent Index (OT300), Ocean Tomo’s index of companies chosen for strong IP portfolios), used his firm as an example of the results of innovation: Abbot started as one man in his kitchen (in contrast to popular lore of innovators starting in their garages). It now employs 90,000 and has made billions of dollars for its investors.
It was fitting at a Chicago-themed event that I would sit next to Ed Uhlir, Executive Director of Millennium Park and manager of the project that built such a great example of innovation… Chicago style.
Image © Chicago Innovation Awards