2010 Chicago Innovation Awards Nomination Form

This year is shaping up to be better than ever. Please use the following form to submit your nomination for this year's award season. The submission deadline is July 31st, 2010.
We accept nominations from the greater Chicago area including southeastern Wisconsin, southwestern Michigan, and northwestern Indiana. If you have any questions, please contact us.

Contact Information

Please fill out all contact information. We may need to contact you for further information regarding your nomination. Field marked with * are required.

Nominated Product/Service

Product/Service Description

Please give a brief description of the product/service: *

Does the product/service have financial evidence (or other customer / industry acceptance information) to support it at this time? If yes, please describe:

Supporting Materials

If you need to upload an image or video, product brochure, please add it below. (.pdf, .jpg, .avi, .flv, .zip)

Send us a video

In addition to the 10 Chicago Innovation Award winners, one organization will be deemed this year's
People's Choice Award winner from a popular vote. Voting will take place on our website. For this competition, we encourage all nominees to send us a video at nominations@chicagoinnovationawards.com that we will upload to the Chicago Innovation Awards YouTube Channel.

(We are always looking to connect Chicago's innovators with resource providers that may be able to provide some type of assistance)

Kuczmarski & Associates, Inc.
C/O Luke Tanen
2001 N. Halsted, Suite 201
Chicago, IL 60614

Supporting Materials

In some cases, companies will send us product samples along with their nomination. You still need to complete your nomination online, but if you want to ship us something, please use the following address:

Celebrating and Rewarding Chicago's Innovators

The Top 10 nominees will be honored at the Chicago Innovation Awards ceremony on November 1st at the Goodman Theatre. Each honoree will be profiled in the Chicago Sun-Times, featured in an advertising campaign on CTA trains and buses, invited to a private lunch with Mayor Richard M. Daley to discuss their winning innovation, given a one-year membership to the Illinois Technology Association, invited to ring the opening NASDAQ bell in New York City by TechAmerica, and given a one-year membership in TechAmerica Midwest.

The Top 75 nominees will be granted one scholarship to attend an all day Executive Education Course ($2,500 value), on 'Innovation Best Practices'. This event is hosted by the Kellogg School of Management in September.

Every nominee is invited to attend our Nominee Reception in August to network with other innovators and business resource providers.

Evaluation Criteria

Our judges look for companies from all business sectors (including not-for-profit) whose innovation meet some or all of the following criteria:

  • Introduced within the past 3 years
  • created a whole new category of business (ex: e-trading stocks)
  • triggered a ‘me-too’ response from competitors (ex: Touch screen cell phones)
  • Changed or elevated consumer expectations (ex: overnight delivery)
  • Solved unmet customer or consumer needs
  • Received market support (users) or Financial success (revenues, although not necessarily profits

This Year’s Popular Vote

2010 will mark another year of the Chicago Innovation People's Choice Award. All nominees qualify for the popular vote, which will take place on our website. Popular votes will be tallied throughout the awards season, and one winner will be chosen at the end.