Aperiomics, Health and Life Sciences Innovator of the Year Nominee ​
Crystal R Icenhour, PhD
CEO
www.aperiomics.com



1. In your opinion, what makes a company innovative?
Innovation is the act of creating a product or service (or improving on one) that will enhance the lives of others. Innovation in a company can come about in many ways– through technology, through procedure, through culture. The most innovative companies instill this spirit in every aspect of the organization. The world changes and evolves through innovation.

2. What makes your company/organization innovative?
Aperiomics strives to ingrain innovation in all aspects of the company, in everything from technology to culture. As a startup company, we have a unique ability to think outside of typical company norms and to adapt rapidly as needed. Our technology is at the cutting edge and will transform the way infections are identified. Our culture is dynamic and small, yet flexible. As a young company, we have the ability to offer exceptional opportunities for staff to try on many different roles. Having limited resources (space, talent, funding), we are constantly challenging the way things are accomplished.

3. What or who are some innovative companies or people that inspire you and your team?
Aperiomics is inspired by the countless people suffering from undiagnosed infections. Every day we hear stories from patients or physicians of those that are enduring puzzling or chronic infections and don’t know where to turn to because traditional medicine has failed them. We sleep well at night because we know our solution will help identify what pathogens are in their DNA so physicians can know exactly what to do and eliminate the guesswork in diagnosing.

4. What about Greater Washington has positioned us as an innovative region?
Greater Washington has always been a transient area. With a large presence of government, military and IT professionals in and out of the most important city on earth… we reap the benefits of having a large, diverse population that brings ideas from many backgrounds and cultures.

5. What advice would you give to up-and- coming leaders striving to be innovative in today’s business environment?
Come up with an idea that nobody else is doing (or doing well) and work backwards in terms of complexity and detail to turn that idea into a solution. As they say, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”… so reverse engineering a solution into small chunks make the overwhelming task of turning an idea into a reality a little more palatable. I would also ask a lot of questions! Even if you can’t find everything you want on the Internet, social media is a great place to crowd-source questions.

TriVision Creative,  Marketing and Advertising Innovator of the Year Nominee 
Carlos Cruz, Client Relations

1. What does innovation mean to you?
To us, innovation means to be fearless. Fearless to leap out of the box, Fearless to forge new partnerships, and fearless of what the future offers.  

We look up to the greats in history who have paved the way for all people, and we notice that they fearlessly break the rules by making their own mark. Fearlessly making a mark on the world is what we strive to do.  

2. What makes your company/organization innovative?
We are a true integrated marketing firm and often like to refer to ourselves a one-stop-shop for our clients. We have the capabilities to provide a diversified range of marketing, creative and video production services with in-house multimedia studios in Northern Virginia, DC and Maryland. What we have seen in the past are many integrated marketing companies using third parties for services they cannot provide and their clients end up with inconsistent branding or messaging and delayed deadlines.  

At TriVision, we make sure that all our work is processed in-house to provide our clients with consistent and cohesive branding, messaging, and marketing communications.

3. What or who are some innovative companies or people that inspire you and your team?
Facebook is on the top of our minds when it comes to innovative companies. The social network is growing to become the one-stop-shop for communicating on the internet. Social media is revolutionizing the way we communicating with one another, and Facebook is gleaming at the forefront of this exciting new movement. The beauty of this new medium of communication is that it allows businesses to both communicate to the masses, yet still be able to have interpersonal communication with individuals. That concept is what marketers have been craving since the idea of marketing was born. 
 
4. What about Greater Washington has positioned us as an innovative region? 
Our diversity. This region is home to many people and organizations from around the world. It’s a melting pot of ideas, made up of talented individuals from different fields and backgrounds, each voicing and executing ideas that make this region a leader in innovation. 

On top of that, partnering with local universities fuels our workforce with ambitious young minds ready to make a mark on the world.

5. What advice would you give to up-and-coming leaders striving to be innovative in today’s business environment?
Don’t stick to one passion just because you’re good at it. Find a way to mix two or more passions together. You’ll be surprised at what ideas would come out of combining two things that you love doing. 

The Inc. Lab
Adriana Avakian, Principal and EVP, Innovation Strategy ​

1. What does innovation mean to you?
We believe that people should be at the center of innovation, hence, we specialize in Human Centered Interactive Innovation. We think that how we interact with things, our environment and brands is essential to value creation. As such, we also believe that one of the biggest opportunities for organizations in the IoT era is to position their productions and services as experiences. Like all things, we also believe that innovation is a process; Our Creative Innovation Matrix process helps organizations innovate, engage with their customers and unlock possibilities.

​2. What makes your company /organization innovative?
We have embraced diversity of thinking as core to our culture. We have a multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary team trained to scout and re-frame emerging technologies. In turn, we are able to combine different elements and fascinating new technologies like virtual reality, augmented reality, 3D design and interactive multi modal technologies (touch, gesture, voice) to create amazing interactive experiences designed to engage, unlock, and connect with products and brands. Each experience is unique and a first, while some concepts are similar, our customers vary across so many different verticals, our job is to make their visions real by innovating how people interact with their audience.

​3. What or who are some innovative companies or people that inspire you and your team?
We are driven and inspired by people like Elon Musk, thinking there is not only ROI but ROG or Return on Goods, and visionaries and explorers of new horizons. Companies like Amazon, offering more, faster and smarter and revolutionizing commerce. Uber, disrupting and accelerating autonomous driving, and Snap, bringing a simple way to connect and engage.

4. What about Greater Washington has positioned us as an innovative region? 
The Greater Washington location, culture and dynamics builds great, innovative startups – I recently read in the Washington Business Journal that over the past 20 years, more than 110 D.C. area startups were sold for more than $1 billion, and out of 6,000 business sales over the last 20 years, about 75 percent were to out-of-region purchasers so we are in the correct area!

5. What advice would you give to up and coming leaders striving to be innovative in today’s business environment?
Disruptive innovation is more powerful when applied to a platform than to a product. More importantly, innovations that focus on the customer not only create value, but enable companies to diversify and open markets.New concepts should stand alone to continue their experimental face. Last, have an innovative testing exit strategy. If things don’t work, react and redeploy resources. 

Senseware, Inc, 
Julien Stamatakis, CTO and Co-Founder  Emerging Tech 
Innovator of the Year
1. What does innovation mean to you?
Innovation is more than an inspirational thought; it is the process of bringing forth substance from an idea. It is difficult for me to decouple innovation from hard work, from the many hours of working through difficulties and setbacks. Innovation at its core is perseverance, and we must persevere to see the process through to produce something of value. The end product of innovation can be glamorous, but the process of innovation certainly isn’t. 

2. What makes your company/organization innovative?
Senseware values hard work and the commitment for finishing the task at hand. Every position at Senseware has challenges that must be overcome. We rely on the ability of each team member to find a way to get the job done. Collectively we are working, so collectively we believe we are innovating.

3. What or who are some innovative companies or people that inspire you and your team?
Saar Yoskovitz of Augury Inc., a startup company applying innovative vibration analysis to enable predictive maintenance in facility equipment, has been particularly inspiring to us at Senseware. As an avid entrepreneur, Saar has brought such keen insights to challenge our current thinking and perspectives of the marketplace. We value Saar’s input highly. More than that, however, we appreciate Saar’s genuine concern for us. This experience has inspired and challenged us to grow Senseware in a way that succeeds internally and in the marketplace.  

4. What about Greater Washington has positioned us as an innovative region?
Greater Washington has amazing resources available to it right now. The people, the educational system, and the infrastructure are more than sufficient to position us as an innovative region. 

5. What advice would you give to up-and-coming leaders striving to be innovative in today’s business environment?
See it through. Innovation doesn’t happen without hard work. 

Youth Quest, Public Service Innovator of the Year Nominee
Lynda Mann, Co-Founder and President, The YouthQuest Foundation

1. What does innovation meant to you?
The YouthQuest Foundation team believes innovation is the enlightened consequence of a creative, synergistic process that leads to thinking in new ways about solving problems. For decades, American youth have been dropping out of school at a consistently alarming rate. Traditional approaches repeatedly failed to stop this loss of potential among our youth, most often leading them to a future of poverty and even prison.  We wanted to create a truly innovative approach that would lead to solutions that make life better for these young people, and improve organizations and entire communities where they can grow, learn and work.  


2. What makes your organization innovative?
YouthQuest provides academic and vocational development, scholarships and life-enriching experiences for at-risk youth. Our signature education project is the 3D ThinkLink Initiative. Unlike others serving high-achieving “Science Club” kids, we bring this cutting-edge technology to at-risk youth who’ve become disengaged from education.  Our innovation is not that we introduce kids to 3D design and printing, it’s how we use this technology as a vehicle to teach the important life skills at-risk youth lack, such as critical thinking, problem solving, creativity and the confidence to fail.

3D printing is perfectly suited for showing kids who’ve failed in school that mistakes are part of the learning process – they are the beginning of something good, not the end of something bad. User-friendly software and printers make it fast and easy for them to create designs, evaluate problems and make improvements until they succeed.

​Using Moment of Inspiration, a professional-level CAD (computer-aided design) program, we deliver our innovative teaching methodology based on the way we learn languages. We present 3D design concepts as nouns (2D shapes) and verbs (actions applied to shapes to make them 3D).
Our success is rooted in the understanding that exposure to new ideas and experiences makes young brains grow. 

3. What or who are some innovative companies or people that inspire you and your team?
The PHILLIPS Programs for Children and Families – PHILLIPS is a supportive and innovative partner in our 3D ThinkLink Initiative. 3D classes started at their Annandale campus last year and will expand to their Fairfax campus this year. They’ve tailored our curriculum, originally designed for high school dropouts in National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Programs, to teach teens on the autism spectrum. Our pilot project was so successful that the school formed a club for students from the first class to continue exploring 3D and share what they’ve learned with younger schoolmates. This kids-teaching-kids innovation helped inspire us to launch a program to make our most-motivated ChalleNGe graduates Youth Mentors in their communities.

IMADE3D – It’s been inspiring to watch this group of Virginia entrepreneurs create and perfect the JellyBox, a one-of-a-kind 3D printer kit designed for educational use. It can be built in a day and quickly disassembled, so many students can gain hands-on experience with the mechanical and electrical engineering aspects of 3D printing. Last year, our advanced ChalleNGe students became the first group to do a test-build with the JellyBox designers on hand gathering feedback, which they used to improve their product before putting it on the market.

4. What about Greater Washington has positioned us as an innovative region?
The Greater Washington region has a unique combination of attributes that makes innovation a necessity. 
We have a major urban center, the seat of the federal government, and some of the nation’s wealthiest suburbs, so there are great needs as well as great resources. The region’s rapid growth and cultural diversity present both challenges and opportunities for the development of innovative solutions in areas including education, employment, transportation, housing and health care. 

People from across the country and around the world are drawn here by the region’s concentration of government agencies, tech businesses, research centers, universities, associations and media. They bring with them fresh perspectives and new ways of thinking. What they find is a place where their innovations can gain attention and support, and ultimately be put into practice.

5. What advice would you give to the up-and-coming leaders striving to be innovative in today’s business environment?
Make Connections - Network, share ideas, collaborate. As noted above, you are in a region that has an unmatched combination of resources. Ask questions of everyone – especially the people you want your innovation to help – and pay close attention to their answers. Be open to new ideas without losing sight of your goal. 

Please and Thank You - Take advantage of all the connections you can make here, but also remember to give back whenever you can.  Innovation thrives in an environment of goodwill.

Failure Is Not Final – This is the most important lesson we teach our 3D ThinkLink students. We help them discover that making mistakes is part of the learning process. Great innovations come from trial and error, learning from failures and persevering to achieve your goal. As one of the great innovators of our time, Elon Musk, said: “Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.” 

YouthQuest Foundation website: www.youthquestfoundation.org
Photo cutlines:
YouthQuestLyndaMann
YouthQuest Foundation Co-Founder and President Lynda Mann

YouthQuest3DStudentsSplit
3D ThinkLink students from DC, Maryland and South Carolina National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Programs

YouthQuestTomMeeksJellybox
YouthQuest Director of Instruction Tom Meeks shows advanced 3D ThinkLink students a Jellybox 3D printer during Immersion Training Week in the foundation’s Chantilly, Virginia, lab.

Gormet Symphony, Hospitality, Tourism & Entertainment Innovator of the Year Nominee

John Devlin
Co-founder & Artistic Director
Gourmet Symphony
www.gourmetsymphony.org  


What does innovation mean to you?

I think the most successful forms of innovation are the ones in which even the smallest opportunities for improvement are considered and acted upon. Each step of progress is meaningful both for the change that it creates and the ethos of the organization. 


What makes Gourmet Symphony innovative?

For an arts organization, innovation often means confronting a long and important history—and adapting it for a modern audience or aesthetic. From the beginning, Gourmet Symphony has made sure to honor that tradition, but also has explored a number of ways to improve on a rather standardized form of concert presentation. With many years of experience in the food and music industries, our team was able to begin its life together fully committed to innovation and forward-thinking concepts. The result has been the creation of a viable alternative to the traditional concert format, and one that draws in both experienced and new audience members alike. 


What or who are some innovative companies or people that inspire you or your team?

The people that inspire me the most are the ones that inhabit a questioning mindset at all times. These people see rules, and ask why they exist. Even if they don’t thwart or change those rules, the process of asking the questions is the most valuable. Some of the people that most inspired this way of thinking in me are: 

1. Lin-Manuel Miranda: He took the “Broadway show” (just like Gourmet Symphony took the classical music concert) and re-imagined what was possible. He combined the best parts of tradition and fused them with amazing innovations to create something that has become universally loved.

2. Bill Simmons: He has re-shaped the way sports and sports media relate to their respective audiences. He identifies topics and angles that others haven’t considered and presents them in a way that is incredibly relevant for an audience that absorbs information in new ways.

3. Malcolm Gladwell: He has taken a novel approach to the analysis of human trends. By challenging assumptions, he has found deep meaning in hidden places. 


​

What about Greater Washington has positioned us as an innovative region?

We could not be in a more perfect place to accomplish Gourmet Symphony’s goals. Our musicians are drawn from the incredible artistic organizations that call the D.C.-area home: the National Symphony Orchestra, the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, military bands and orchestras, and even the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra! Combine that with a burgeoning restaurant scene (D.C. was voted Best Restaurant City in the country for 2016 by Bon Appetite Magazine) that keeps attracting more creative and innovative restaurateurs and chefs—and we have the perfect petri dish for our experiments. 


Advice for Up-and-Coming Leaders?

The best piece of advice I ever received is that to be successful, most people don’t pursue just one passion—they find two things that might seem disparate and combine them to create something new. Not only does this allow for a new niche to be inhabited, but it also ensures that the organization reflects something unique about its creators. So, in this case, even though my life is in the classical music world, food is my other passion. By combining the two, there was a new open space to explore. And, I am excited every day by the work that we do and the creative collisions we form by mixing the culinary and musical arts.