Endeavors pay off for clever InDevR

BOULDER — Life science company InDevR cleaned up at the 15th edition of BizWest’s Innovation Quotient Awards on Oct. 6, taking home the awards for Innovative Company of the Year and the people’s choice award for Innovation of the Year.

The IQ Awards, held at the Boulder Theater, featured 21 innovative companies from the Boulder Valley pitching in seven different products and services categories. In addition to a winner in each category, judges also handed out three special awards.

Boulder-based InDevR creates analytical technologies, including instrumentation and assays for the analysis of viruses that accelerate development and manufacturing of life-saving products.

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While InDevR was beaten out in the bioscience category during the pitch portion of the competition by JustRight Surgical, the company beat out a group of companies that included JumpCloud and MinuteKey for Innovative Company of the Year. InDevR also got the most votes text messaged in from the crowd to take home Innovation of the Year.

The full list of award winners included:

Innovative Company of the Year: InDevR.

Other finalists: JumpCloud, MinuteKey

Incubator/Accelerator of the Year: Unreasonable Institute.

The institute unites entrepreneurs with mentors, funders and partners in specialized global educational institutes ranging from five days to five weeks and created to scale solutions to the world’s biggest problems such as poverty, social justice and lack of education. Labs and workshops focus on business validation and investment preparedness to take a business to a new level of growth. Other finalists: Boomtown, Galvanize.

Innovator of the Year: Dale Katechis.

The founder of Oskar Blues Brewery in 41 states, Oskar Blues Original Grill and Brew, REEB Cycles, Hops & Heifers Farm and the REEB Ranch, Katechis is largely credited with being the first craft brewer to sell canned beer in the United States. Oskar Blues also has led the industry in developing a resealable beer bottle and selling its beers in larger cans. Other finalists: Bruce Borowsky and Zach Daudert, Boulder Digital Arts; Christopher Peterson and Phillip Villella, LogRhythm.

Innovation of the Year: InDevR.

PRODUCTS AND SERVICES CATEGORIES

Bioscience: JustRight Surgical.

The company develops right-sized surgical devices that access confined spaces and operate effectively on delicate tissue bundles and fine structures, allowing smaller incisions and better visibility. Other finalists: InDevR, Encision.

Business: BlackSquare Technologies.

The company has designed, engineered, built and now markets a patented, real time, hardware encryption and key management IT security device called Enigma. Other finalists: BluFlux, Atomic20.

Consumer: TECHtionary.

The company offers BiEyes, an iPhone/iPad photo app that allows pictures to be taken with both cameras at the same time called SNAP or POSE. The user takes one photo and then another, and can see them in various image formats and save or share them in multiple media. Other finalists: Soundwall, Lunchbox Electronics.

Green Business: Clean Energy Collective.

A solar tech startup in 2009, the Louisville-based collective has grown to become a leading developer of roofless community solar solutions. CEC pioneered the model of delivering clean-power generation through medium-scale solar photovoltaic facilities accessible to all utility customers. Other finalists: Sustainable Power Systems, Black Swift Technologies.

Internet/Web: Earthvisionz. 

The company creates enterprise-level, location aware, visual data-management systems that help make smarter and faster decisions, providing unlimited data, including live feeds, overlaid onto specific geographic locations. Other finalists: Conspire, FlipTask.

Social Media/Mobile Apps:

Makeena. A shopping “ecosystem” helps healthy and sustainable brands reach shoppers, and shoppers discover brands and products that meet their lifestyle preferences or dietary needs at any retailer for an affordable price. Makeena is sometimes described as “Waze meets Yelp meets eBates” for the natural products industry. Other finalists: Lassy Project, SQFT.

Software: VictorOps.

A real-time incident-management platform that helps DevOps pros handle incidents as they occur. The platform, called Transmogrifier, allows on-call engineers to have the solution embedded into every IT problem that comes their way. Software and sites can be kept running to begin solving problems immediately and reduce “alert fatigue” that often comes with being on call in IT. Other finalists: Knowledge Factor, Quick Left.