Connect Announces Winners of 23rd Most Innovative Product Awards

Connect, the San Diego non-profit group dedicated to supporting technology innovation and entrepreneurism, named the winners of its “Most Innovative New Product” awards at a luncheon ceremony Friday. This year, San Diego’s innovation community nominated more than 100 new products—a record number of nominees—which prompted Connect CEO Duane Roth to note in a statement that “the true measure of an innovation economy is the volume of research that translates into successful products.”

The group also named TurboTax as the recipient of this year’s Otterson Award, which Connect describes as the highlight of its ceremony. The award, created in memory of Connect’s founding executive director, Bill Otterson, recognizes technologies or products developed in San Diego that have demonstrated a “significant positive impact on quality of life.” San Diego’s ChipSoft developed TurboTax during the early 1980s and Mountain View, CA-based Intuit (NASDAQ: [[ticker:INTU]]) acquired ChipSoft in 1993. Since its launch in 1984, TurboTax has grown to become the nation’s best-selling tax preparation software.

Connect also surprised two people, life sciences consultant Julia Brown and Provide Commerce CEO Bill Strauss, with its Distinguished Contribution Award, which recognizes individuals who have supported the advancement of local entrepreneurs.

The 2010 MIP Award winners in each of eight categories are:

—Action and Sport Technologies: Solana Beach, CA-based ElliptiGO for the ElliptiGO 8S, a low-impact fitness training machine that is part bicycle, part elliptical cross-trainer.

ElliptiGo Trainer
ElliptiGo Trainer

—Aerospace and Security Technologies: San Diego’s Trex Aviation Systems (part of Trex Enterprises) for the FOD Finder, a millimeter band radar and related technology that is mounted on a vehicle and used to automatically detect

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.