Connect, the nonprofit supporting entrepreneurship and innovation throughout the San Diego region, offered a final heartfelt goodbye to the late Duane Roth today as part of its 26th annual awards luncheon for the most innovative products introduced over the past year. Roth led Connect for nearly seven years before his untimely death on Aug. 3 from injuries he suffered in a bicycling accident.
“It’s been about four months since Duane passed on and I’m often asked how I’m doing, and I say ‘It sucks,’” said Duane’s brother Ted Roth, a San Diego-based investment banker and Connect board member. Close to 700 people attended the luncheon at the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines, and Ted Roth told said his brother would have been thankful for the community’s continued support for Connect and its efforts to grow the innovation economy in San Diego.
Ted Roth accepted Connect’s posthumous award to his brother, saying Duane took particular satisfaction in Connect’s annual Most Innovative Products awards ceremony for calling attention to the feats of innovation and entrepreneurship taking place in San Diego. In an additional honor, Connect renamed the annual award as “The Duane Roth Distinguished Contribution Award for Life Sciences and Technology Innovation.”
About 100 companies submitted products for consideration as the most innovative product in nine categories. Volunteer judges screened the entries for eligibility, and selected six entries for each category to make presentations to a selection committee of industry leaders that chose three finalists in each category. The finalists then made
