The forty-six qualifying nominations for this year’s Fortnightly Top Innovators included one hundred and thirty-seven innovators. Twenty-three of the nominations — exactly half of them – were of an individual innovator. The remaining twenty-three nominations were of a group of innovators. The groups ranged from small two-person teams to large teams with as many as a dozen team members.
The one hundred and thirty-seven innovators work at twenty-seven different organizations. Including nineteen utilities, four vendors, two state utility regulatory commissions and two research entities.
For this year’s Fortnightly Top Innovators, among the forty-three nominations we selected the most outstanding — in our judgement — in ten categories. Specifically, we selected the Fortnightly Foremost Innovator in customer service, distributed resources, energy efficiency, environmental care, infrastructure safety, new technologies, regulatory effectiveness, smart grid, system efficiency, utility culture.
And, for now, that’s all we’re saying. Our selections are top secret. As much so as a President’s phone call with a foreign leader.
To see who made it as this year’s Fortnightly Foremost Innovators, the ten individuals or teams that we chose, you’ll need to grab yourself a copy of November’s special issue on innovation. The special issue, which also celebrates all forty-six qualifying nominations, comes out on the eleventh of November. Which is quite naturally Samuel Insull’s birthday.