The World Economic Forum announced today the 2010 class of Technology Pioneers. The 26 companies selected as Technology Pioneers 2010 represent the most innovative start-ups from around the globe that will have a critical impact on the future of business and society. These innovators will join the wider World Economic Forum community for the first time during the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010 in Davos-Klosters, in January.
The Technology Pioneers 2010 are active in areas such as cloud computing and open source application management, social networking, financial inclusion through telecommunications, genome sequencing, responsive implants and wireless patient management solutions, waste remediation, fuel cell technology and the production of energy efficient building materials.
The identification of the Technology Pioneer companies is the result of a vigorous selection process for which the Forum received more than 300 applications from around the world, and that were evaluated by 58 global technology experts.
The selected companies are in alphabetical order: Amiando, Amobee, Aura Biosciences, BioFuelBox, Bloom Energy Corporation, Boston-Power, Care Electric Energia, CollabNet, Corventis, Dilithium Networks, Epuramat, eSolar, Innovid, Lehigh Technologies, Metabolix, MicroCHIPS, Obopay, Pacific Biosciences, Playfish, Proteon Therapeutics, RingCentral, Serious Materials, StreamBase, Twitter, Ushahidi and VNL. The entire list of Technology Pioneers, with their profiles and video interviews with their CEOs, can be found at http://www.weforum.org/techpioneers.
Previous Technology Pioneers include 23andme (2008), Amyris Biotechnologies (2006), Dr Reddy Laboratories (2001), Google (2001), Gridpoint (2008), Kaspersky Lab (2001), Mozilla Corporation (2007), Nanosolar (2007), Recyclebank (2009) and Silver Spring Networks (2008).
“Entrepreneurship, innovation and technology have always played a key role in shaping and improving society. This proves to be even more the case during times of crisis, similar to the one the world faced this past year during the biggest recession in almost a century. New companies are already planting the seeds of recovery and the next wave of growth and progress,” said André Schneider, Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer of the World Economic Forum.