SwampFox

2007 Best New Ideas for New Carolina

New Ideas for New Carolina was launched at InnoVenture 2007 and awards were made last week at the ThinkTEC Innovation Conference. Entries were judged based on three criteria:

Viability: (makes credible and believable case, is concise and easy to understand, and demonstrates relevant industry knowledge (competition, market need, pricing etc..)

Innovation/Vision: (demonstrates creative thought, revolutionary or new perspective on existing markets and businesses, extraordinary vision for business in South Carolina.

Profit/Revenue Potential: (satisfies a need in a commercially significant market, demonstrates operational feasibility and/or expertise, and/or offers superior alternative to products or services available now from others).

And the 2007 winners are...

THE GRAND PRIZE - $3000

Advanced Materials and Engineering
William Floyd – Environmentally Friendly Fluorochemical Reactant
Versatile technology is being developed to bring the benefits of reactive fluorochemical performance without the environmental problems of current technology

THE FIRESTOKERS - $1500

College
Randi Eaton – Designed by Me Denim
A customizable denim jeans company where people can be measured, pick out colors, styles, and customizable options to create the perfect pair of jeans.

Alternative Fuels
Worth Ketchem – Micro Kinetic Energy Capture
Interconnected energy capture, storage, and release devices aggregated as a scalable and sustainable distributed generation solution.

Automotive
James Poch - Plug-in Hybrid Battery
Manufacture, sell, and install next generation battery kits that enable hybrid vehicles to be charged from a standard electrical outlet.

Biotech/Medical Devices
Sebastiano Gattoni-Celli – Lou Gehrig’s Vaccine
Immune-based treatment of Lou Gehrig’s disease for transgenic animal models and future human studies

Community Enhancement and Education
Jonathan Brown – Sandlapper Clean Fuels Alliance
The Alliance will create public/ private partnerships to establish clean fuels infrastructure and demonstration projects in South Carolina’s eight coastal counties to overcome the immediate, real-world barriers to the adoption and public availability of alternative fuels.

Creative
Gary Davis – Cineventure South
An organization designed to promote the funding of a dramatic and documentary feature film/video production industry in South Carolina.

Environmental Sustainability
Wayne Loveless - Offshore Renewable Energy
Harnessing the energy of offshore currents and wind with recycled oil platforms fitted with a combination of undersea turbines and windmill power generators.

Security
W. David Findley and Brian Bannister – Electronic Vehicle Tag (E-Tag)
An electronic license plate that give the issuing authority the capability to change the plate display status by a wireless signal, regardless of the vehicle location.

Technology
Josh Staples – Community Tours
Community Tours is a Web 2.0 website which allows members to create and share geotagged audio-tours via a Google Maps interface while using Google’s AdSense to drive spatially appropriate advertising to generate revenue.

Tourism
Dr. Ron Fulbright - Data Spritz
A data spritz is a postage-stamp-sized data storage device affixed to or near a tourist attraction containing textual and graphical information about the attraction and wirelessly transmits the information to a hand-held reader when brought in close proximity.

Wild Card/People’s Choice
Wilson Davis - Aquatic Muscle
A body suit designed to teach children how to swim which allows a child to build up swimming muscles along with confidence to learn to swim at his/her own pace

THE INNOVATORS - $500

Advanced Material and Engineering
Lew Wayburn – Qool Breeze
With the great move of people to the outdoors, we will provide efficient “outdoor comfort” systems, an umbrella with integrated ‘special’ fan with true cooling capability for refuge in heat of the day that doesn’t merely create a hot wind, but a very pleasing “Cool Breeze”, a kind of ‘fan on steroids’.

Technology
Sherri Miller – The Key
A hardware USB device that runs a customized full computer access control over your child’s computer.

Alternative Fuels
Tom Davis - Syngas Hydrogen Recovery
Hydrogen biomass recovery for energy production.

Creativity
Pat Jobe – South Carolina Interactive Innovation Variety Show
An interactive television show combing an 800 phone number and an interactive web site with music and art from South Carolina to promote positive social change in the state.

Environmental Sustainability
Bobby Pilch – Hotelmilieu
The first LEED certified, franchiseable hotel that continuously embraces sustainable operational practices and technology, in order to conserve energy, reduce waste, and achieve bottom-line results for the long-term

Automotive
Basil Garzia - Vehicle “Go” Light
An indicator light on the front of a vehicle which helps pedestrians, construction workers, safety officers and other motorists in recognizing the forward motion of the vehicle.

Tourism
Dr. Ron Fulbright – Digital Guest Directory
The digital guest directory replaces the standard static printed guest directory in a hotel room with a sheet of ultra-low-power, thin-film, dynamic display technology called digital paper (or electronic ink) that displays up-to-the-minute information to the guest in a way that is indistinguishable from printed text and graphics