Innovation Award 2011-2012: How Innovative?

[bemo]

All,

This year's winners ideas do not seem so innovative?! Our team did some research on current cool ideas for food safety to get a sense of what is happening in the food safety area. We discovered this link early relating to a smart barcode from year 2009 (Rhode Island researchers):

http://www.photonics.com/Article.aspx?AID=36905

In addition the non-reverseable temperature sensitive stickers are plentiful to purchase from alibaba.com. Just google "temperature sensitive sticker."

There are lots of great ideas for this year's innovation, just not sure why the winners were deemed innovative. Last year's winner I thought was innovative.

Thanks.

[BeckyMiller]

I believe a lot has to do with the presentation. I saw some brilliant ideas in the Body Forward year but they weren't presented well. The one that won, BOB-1, was cool but I've seen it done before. The key? It was easy to put on and take off and it was cost effective. A big part of inventing (and innovation) is getting your idea to market before someone else with the same idea does.