"What does innovation mean to business?" It's a question we posed to the finalists for our upcoming Mid-Atlantic Innovation Celebration Awards. While they come from different industries and have presented their own, unique innovations to us, each found innovation critical to their business models. Read their answers, presented in alphabetical order, below, and join us on May 12th for the Awards show to network with fellow business innovators, see this year's finalists videos, and help us name the People's Choice winner, live.
See the entire list of finalists here.
"When you're ultimately in the business of saving lives, innovation and the desire to seek out and implement better solutions is critical. How do we best identify and support those who are leading us into the future of cancer care? In our fast-paced, tech-heavy world - we have to keep pushing forward and welcome new and diverse ideas - especially when it makes you uncomfortable. Meaningful change and innovation is not easy."
~Dr. Karen E. Knudsen, CEO, American Cancer Society
"Innovation is the backbone of the business world, bringing forth revolutionary ideas, products, and services. Innovation is what empowers business to be everchanging, evolving and advancing in a supply and demand world. To compete and profit, businesses must claim that they are bigger, faster, stronger, easier, and better. To achieve these goals innovation is necessary to develop disruptive products that will revolutionize the industry and is the key to success. Without innovation, there is simply, no business."
~Sue Carr, President, CarrTech Corp
"Innovation is at the core of maintaining business relevance. As entrepreneurs and business leaders, we are the liaisons between consumers and their changing trends and needs. The value of any business rests in the relevance of their products and services. Thus, innovation is key to maintaining profitability, which in turn enables further innovation."
~Danya Sherman, President, KnoNap
"Innovation is what drives solutions to be created and grown, and solutions to pressing problems are the foundation of any good business. The most difficult problems require us to stretch our minds, recombining what methods we’ve practiced into new forms to meet the needs of our new challenges. I practice innovation in every area of my business, drawing on my creativity to redefine even known or common processes such as sales."
~Tara Gupta, CEO and Founder, Map-Collective Inc.
"We are a consumer product company in the very competitive Health & Beauty space. The scientific research we conduct and integrate into our products, is our single, biggest competitive advantage. Innovation fuels our product engine, enables us to impact the environment positively and builds trust with our customer community. Without it, we would be just another brand with a cool marketing story that is easily replaced by companies with bigger marketing budgets."
~Jasmin El Kordi, CEO, Mblue Labs
"We believe that innovation is vital toward liberating consumers from the status quo. Innovation elegantly solves painful market and customer problems with cost-effective and frictionless solutions. Our innovation gives our consumers a reason to believe that we are uniquely positioned and qualified to earn their trust and loyalty."
~Scott Corlett, CEO, MEDA
"As a federal contractor, we need to be thought leaders for our customers. Technology underlies nearly everything we do, and it advances at a pace that requires constant innovation. Innovation is a path to discovery; it provides the ways in which we can improve. We need to constantly challenge ourselves to work quicker and be more efficient. Our goal is using technology to improve health care decision making, lower costs and ultimately improve health care outcomes."
~Mike Eddings, CEO, Optum Serve Technology Services and Consulting Services
"We believe that innovation is vital toward liberating consumers from the status quo. Innovation elegantly solves painful market and customer problems with cost-effective and frictionless solutions. Our innovation gives our consumers a reason to believe that we are uniquely positioned and qualified to earn their trust and loyalty."
~Tom Klaff, Co-founder and CEO, Revolution Cooking, LLC
"Innovation is by its nature the bringing into being of something that is novel. But, novelty combined with utility is what really matters to business. The ability to change customer behavior and bend it your way is the secret to business and the key to innovation that matters. You can't have a business without customers and you can't have customers unless you provide something they want. Matching innovation to market is the biggest challenge for a business to master, and the challenge that when met is the most rewarding."
~Jonathan Aberman, Dean and Professor of Practice,
Marymount College of Business, Innovation, Leadership and Technology, Marymount University
"We cannot solve problems with the same kind of thinking that created those problems in the first place. Business is an evolution and we need innovation to evolve and bring in new products and business models that fix the problems caused by the older products and models."
~Abraham Kamarck, CEO, True Made Foods
"Innovation is a critical component in empowering students by fostering an entrepreneurial mindset, which helps students to think creatively and find ways to translate their passions into real-world experiences."
~Marc Steren, CEO, University Startups
