2006 Coverage
Group lights the way to cheaper energy bills
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People in the power industry thought the Community Energy Cooperative was nuts when it introduced real-time electricity pricing to residential customers.
"The conventional thinking was that residential customers weren't interested in paying attention to their energy use," said Kathryn Tholin, CEO of the Center for Neighborhood Technology.
The cooperative is an affiliate of CNT. "It's too complicated. It's risky. People don't want to deal with fluctuating prices."
A three-year pilot program proved the skeptics wrong. Under the Energy-Smart Pricing Plan, customers save money, reduce their power use and cut stress on the system. Now a new law requires utilities to offer hourly, market-based electricity prices to residential customers statewide in 2007.
The Energy-Smart Pricing Plan inspired interest and imitators around the country, and has earned a Chicago Innovation Award for 2006.
Tasty 'Check, Please!' spreads its wings
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The idea came to David Manilow while he was in the shower. Now he's cleaning up with it.
"Check, Please!," the six-year-old WTTW-Channel 11 show that lets Joe or Jane Chicago take a stab at being a restaurant critic on TV, has spread. About 22,000 folks have signed up to be guests.
The appeal goes far beyond Chicago. Other stations want in. A Bay Area version was launched last year, and producer Manilow -- who also logged time as an artist, interior designer, consultant and television sports producer -- is preparing a Los Angeles version for next year. Seattle/Vancouver, New York and Hawaii are also on his radar.
He plans to be in three new markets and expand the show's Internet presence in 2007.
The "Check, Please!" concept, which seems so obvious after six seasons, broke a TV barrier. First-of-its-kind on the air and now imitated in small towns with only a handful of restaurants, the program earned Manilow and his team a 2006 Chicago Innovation Award.
"I just wanted to do an authentic look at restaurants in Chicago," Manilow said, noting, "You can't get credible reviews on TV if the reviewer is known" because chefs and staff tend to upgrade food and service.
But, would the format work on television: three people from diverse backgrounds and armed with stipends dining at each other's selected restaurants and then offering critiques around a dining table.
"The real question was 'How would regular people look and feel on camera and mesh with each other?' " Manilow said. Obviously, pretty well. "I remember being in the control room laughing and thinking, 'Oh, my God. This is actually gonna work.' "
Easy does it could be software developer's motto
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American author and naturalist Henry David Thoreau advised: "simplify, simplify, simplify."
Chicago software developer 37signals has run with it: Its simple collaboration software has won rave reviews and a cultlike following and earned the company a 2006 Chicago Innovation Award.
Jason Fried, 32, co-founder of 37signals, said, "While other software is filled with features, 37signals creates software with minimal features, but a strong focus on simplicity."
37signals' software can be set up in minutes and is free of the complicated features that frustrate people (37signals espouses its own manifesto in which it rejects the common computer industry word "users").
37signals offers tools at its Web site, www.37signals.com, for project collaboration, group chats, information organization, collaborative writing and to-do lists.
The idea has resonated. The company quietly launched its Basecamp software, a project collaboration tool, in February 2004. As word spread and new products were released, 37signals has attracted the masses: it recently registered its 1 millionth customer. At the end of 2005, it had 500,000 registered people. Fried said he considers the company's Campfire -- a Web browser-based group chat for up to 60 participants -- 37signals' most important product.
226 nominees vie for 2006 Innovation Awards
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The 226 nominees for a 2006 Chicago Innovation Award will be honored Wednesday at a reception on the trading floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, one of the sponsors of the five-year-old awards program.
Ten nominees will be selected for an Innovation Award, profiled in the Chicago Sun-Times, and feted at an awards ceremony Oct. 30. For more information: www.chicagoinnovationawards.com.
When the dust settles, just sweep it away
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Construction dust -- that fine, chalky, endlessly aggravating-for-its-reappearance white powder -- drives obsessive-compulsive neatniks into a screaming fit. USG, the hometown wallboard manufacturer that emerged stronger after bankruptcy, credits its scientist, Salvatore "Sam" Immordino, with stopping the insanity.
Immordino, 37, is the brains behind a "dust control" joint compound whose patented formula prevents dust from forming when the joint compound in dry wall seams gets sanded. Instead of floating endlessly through the air until it covers workers and furniture, it falls to the floor in neat, tiny particles, where they are swept up and discarded, increasing worker productivity and reducing cleanup costs.
It's an innovation that earned USG its second Chicago Innovation Award in two years.
Immordino realized his lab experiments could be the answer to maddening dust after he accidentally flooded his newly finished basement. Construction workers created a dust storm when they replaced ruined dry wall. After Immordino's wife complained, he realized that the experimental joint compound he had taken home to work on in the basement had averted the dust problem.
The dust-free joint compound acts like Chapstick when it gets hot. The heat melts special additives in the compound, causing the additives to grab onto the dust particles, making the dust particles stick together and fall to the floor rather than become airborne.