The World Economic Forum has selected 47 visionary companies as Technology Pioneers 2007. Each of the selected companies is involved in the development of life-changing technology innovation and has potential for long-term impact on business and society. Most of the 2007 Technology Pioneers are US companies with 13 located in California alone.
Awards have been handed out in the categories Biotechnology/Health, Information Technology and Energy. The awarded organizations were nominated by the world’s leading venture capital and technology companies. The final selection from 225 nominees was made by a panel of technology experts appointed by the World Economic Forum. Since the program started in 2000 a total of 352 companies have been selected for Technology Pioneer Awards.
Following the list of IT companies awarded for 2007 with a brief summary of their innovations, when, by whom,where they were founded together with the names of the leading investors for each company:
Links and descriptions after the jump
Alfresco Software Inc
Alfresco offers Open Source Enterprise Content Management (ECM) - Document Management, Collaboration, Records Management, Knowledge Management, Web Content Management and Imaging. Alfresco dramatically lowers TCO through open source distribution, working in the user’s native environment, minimizing training and using low cost, loosely coupled hardware. The company says that its technology enable it to deliver supported systems that are 5 times faster and 10 times cheaper than traditional closed systems.
Country: UK / USA
Founded in/by: 2005 by John Newton, co-founder of Documentum® and John Powell, former COO of Business Objects®
Leading Investors: Accel Partners and Mayfield Fund.
BridgePort Networks Inc
BridgePort Networks™ delivers a broad range of end-to-end MobileVoIP applications and solutions to telecommunications service providers. Its network convergence gateway uses roaming technology to extend single identity phone number services over multiple access networks, including mobile, cable, DSL, and WiFi.
Country: USA
Founded in/by: 2001 by telecommunications industry leaders and veterans
Leading Investors: BCE Capital, General Catalyst Partners, Polaris and TD Capital Ventures.
Cicero Networks
Cicero Networks is developing solutions for the delivery of Voice over Wireless IP. The company has focused on building platform-independent solutions which offer operators and service providers a means of delivering high-quality voice services over both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth networks. Its solutions enables operators to connect calls to fixed-line or hotspot locations at least cost to subscribers
Country: Ireland
Founded in/by: 2002 by IT software industry leaders and veterans
Leading Investors: privately held company
comScore Networks
comScore Networks is measuring, analyzing and reporting actual e-commerce transaction data across worldwide websites. With its consumer behavior database and the expertise of comScore analysts it delivers insight into key business issues facing marketers in specific industries from Automotive to Travel.
Country: USA
Founded in/by: 1999 by IT, marketing and market research industry leaders and veterans
Leading Investors: Accel Partners, Flatiron, Lehman Brothers Venture Fund, Topspin Partners, vSpring Capital, Adams Street Partners, Institutional Venture Partners and Rembrandt Venture Partners.
Drishtee
Drishtee is creating and implementing a scalable platform of entrepreneurship to enable the development of rural economy and society with the use of IT. Through a tiered franchise and partnership model, Drishtee facilitates the establishment of IT nodes enabling access to information as well as local services to the rural community at nominal value. Drishtee wants to connect India village by village.
Country: India
Founded in/by: 2000 by IT software and training practitioners / veterans
Leading Investors: public limited company
Dust Networks Inc
Dust Networks makes wireless sensor network systems that monitor and control building systems. Its SmartMesh platform connects sensors with in-building climate control, equipment monitoring, and surveillance systems, allowing for building automation, industrial monitoring, and enhanced security.
Country: USA
Founded in/by: 2002 by engineers and industry pioneers
Leading Investors: Cargill Ventures, Crescendo Ventures, Foundation Capital, In-Q-Tel, Institutional Venture Partners.
HelloSoft Inc
HelloSoft enables mass deployment of low-cost, power-efficient, fully-featured multi-mode wireline and wireless devices by providing highly optimized RISC-based VoIP products with superior voice quality, QoS, and efficient call switching specifically designed for next generation end-points. HelloSoft’s IMS/VCC stack enables seamless hand-off between cellular and Wi-Fi networks for multi-mode handsets.
Country: USA
Founded in/by: 2002 by engineers and incubator
Leading Investors: Venrock Associates, Sofinnova Ventures, JumpStartUp Venture Fund, Acer Technology Ventures, TD Capital Ventures, Entrepia, Mitsui & Co. Venture Partners and Intel Capital
IceMobile
IceMobile is a leading publisher of mobile entertainment content providing content to the portals of 30 European mobile operators. Its VideoCall2TV technology allows viewers to make a video call from their third-generation (3G) mobile phone to a TV program and participate in the show with live spontaneous performances.
Country: The Netherlands
Founded in/by: 2002 by industry veterans and entrepreneurs
Leading Investors: privately owned and funded company
MobiTV Inc
MobiTV, Inc. is the first mobile television and digital radio service provider for cellular, WiFi and broadband enabled devices worldwide. Its services are available in the US, UK, Canada and by other regional carriers around the world.
Country: USA
Founded in/by: 2000 by industry veterans and engineers
Leading Investors: Oak Investment Partners, Menlo Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Gefinor Ventures and Sorrento Ventures.
Mozilla Corporation
Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation. The Mozilla Corporation is undertaking the development and promotion of products that further the Foundation’s public benefit mission to preserve choice and innovation on the Internet. Its best know product is the world’s second most popular web browser Mozilla FireFox.
Country: USA
Founded in/by: 2005 by global community and engineers
Leading Investors: non-profit
Netomat Inc
Netomat started off as a network based-art project and wants to break down barriers to communication for both consumers and businesses. The company is offering technology solutions for collating digital pictures, audio, voice, free-form drawing, text, and animation for creating emails, blogs, and web sites.
Country: USA
Founded in/by: 1999/2000 by artists, entertainment and software veterans
Leading Investors: Topspin Partners, William Harris Investors, Rockefeller Foundation/ProVenEx and Motorola Ventures.
Omnibase Logic, Inc
Omnibase Logic is a technology licensing company with patents that enable chip designers to use “multiple valued logic” in digital circuits. This technology liberates the designer from the limits of binary code. The technology has the potential to dramatically impact all areas of digital electronics, especially mathematical processing and the storage and transmission of large quantities of data.
Country: USA
Founded in/by: n.a.
Leading Investors: n.a.
Ruckus Wireless Inc
Ruckus Wireless is a wireless equipment supplier focused on the next generation of home networking. The company is developing and marketing technologies and products that enable the home media network ecosystem. Its BeamFlex technology automatically beams Wi-Fi signals around interference to deliver video, audio, games, and data in the home.
Country: USA
Founded in/by: 2004 by wireless and networking technology experts
Leading Investors: Sequoia Capital, Motorola Ventures, T-Online Venture Fund, Sutter Hill Ventures, WK Technology Fund, Investor AB and Firelake Capital Management.
Sling Media
Sling Media is a consumer electronics company that offers digital lifestyle products. Its first product, the Slingbox™, has literally transformed the way we are able watch TV. The Slingbox turns any Internet-connected PC, Mac, or mobile device into your home television allowing you to watch TV virtually anywhere in the world.
Country: USA
Founded in/by: 2004 by industry veterans
Leading Investors: Mobius Venture Capital, DCM - Doll Capital Management, Hearst Media Corporation, Allen & Co, EchoStar Communications, Goldman Sachs and Liberty Media Corporation.
Technorati, Inc
Technorati operates an online search engine that monitors and indexes more then 55 million web logs / blogs. It tracks what people on the Internet are saying about a companies, products, competitors, politics, or other areas of interest.
Country: USA
Founded in/by: 2002 by industry veteran
Leading Investors: August Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Mobius Venture Capital
The MicroOptical Corporation
The MicroOptical Corporation manufactures and markets optical equipment systems, so called portable eyewear viewers. Its viewers are used in the test and measurement, wearable computing, security, law enforcement, military, consumer electronics, medical, and video production industry.
Country: USA
Founded in/by: 1995 by industry veteran
Leading Investors: Atlas Venture, Intel Capital, The Hillman Co. and Turner Broadcasting System.
ThingMagic
ThingMagic is specialized in RFID readers, sensors and other embedded and low cost computing technologies. The company provides RFID capability to label printers, print and apply machines, and other systems that read and write RFID tags.
Country: USA
Founded in/by: 2000 by engineers
Leading Investors: privately held company
Transitive Corporation
Transitive Corporation is a pioneer and leader in providing solutions that allow the transportability of software applications across multiple OS and processor pairs. The company’s QuickTransit® hardware virtualization technology allows software applications that have been compiled for one OS/processor pair to run on another without any source code or binary changes and at speeds comparable to native ports.
Country: UK/USA
Founded in/by: 1992/1995/2000 by industry veteran
Leading Investors: Pond Venture Partners Ltd., Manchester Technology Fund, Crescendo Ventures and Accel Partners.
Truphone
Truphone is based on software infrastructure developed by SCN Ltd. that allows mass market mobile phones via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or 3G using VoIP technology to make calls and send SMS messages using only Wi-Fi and the Internet. When a Truphone-enabled mobile handset is out of Wi-Fi range it reconnects to the mobile network, allowing customers to roam between the two networks. By this it provides the benefits of VoIP rates to a mobile phone customers already own.
Country: UK
Founded in/by: 2000/2001 (SCN Ltd. in the process to be renamed Truphone) by engineers / entrepreneurs
Leading Investors: employees, Business Angels and Venture Capital (? CAP Partners)
More information and video interviews at the World Economic Forum web site and the company web sites.
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