Never is the need to innovate more acute then during an economic downturn.
As money tightens, products and services that demonstrate increasing value are more likely to be chosen.
Companies that improve their operations or find new markets are more likely not only to survive the difficult times, but to be ready to spring ahead when the economy comes back.
And with people looking for signs of progress, revolutionary products can catch the popular imagination in ways that may not be possible during flush times.
In this, our fourth Rhode Island Innovation Awards competition, the Ocean State is giving off a strong and hopeful message during one of our nation’s darkest times – innovators live and work here. We have a lot to celebrate and much to look forward to.
In the Health Care and Biotechnology sector alone, with IlluminOss Medical and EpiVax, our winner and finalist, respectively, and Innovator of the Year, Jeffrey Morgan, all that big talk seems ready to bear fruit in ways that truly have the potential to create a large, prosperous and diverse sector of the state’s economy.
SGE, winner in the Energy and the Environment category, made a big splash a couple years ago as it grew its engineering business into the Middle East. But as the global crisis shut down the cash pipeline, it has seen the opportunity in wind power and has entered that market in a powerful and sustained way.
And Amgen, the Innovation Champion and maker of one of the most successful biologic drugs on the market today, has created a culture of innovation at its West Greenwich facility, one that allows it to put more of its resources to developing new and better products.
All these innovators, as well as the rest profiled in this special section, should give us a good feeling about where this state is headed. •