Celebrating innovation

Even in difficult economic times, some companies excel by creating innovative products. Is your company innovating its way to success? Is your company introducing an innovative product this year? Do you have a truly innovative design engineer or design team that you want to tell the world about? Then, click here to read all about our annual Innovation of the Year competition. The cutoff date for submissions is November 12, 2001, so don't wait. If you have any questions, contact Kathy Leonard at 1-617-558-4405 or kathy.leonard@edn.cahners.com.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Innovation Awards, EDN began this program more than a decade ago to acknowledge and honor the truly significant innovations for each year. Additionally, we honor the most outstanding innovator—or team of innovators—and present a $10,000 scholarship award to the college or university of the winner's choice. We solicit submissions from across the electronics industry, and our technical editors select the most significant product entrants as finalists in 13 categories—the Innovator category makes 14. EDN will feature the finalists in its January 24, 2002 issue. We will then ask EDN worldwide subscribers and EDN Access users to vote online. After the votes are in, we tabulate them, but we keep the names of the winners secret until the formal dinner in March 2002, in San Francisco. (Yes, the event is a black-tie-optional and evening-gown affair.) We will feature the Innovation and Innovator winners in a special section of our March 21, 2002 issue.

The 13 categories include a variety of semiconductor products, instruments, design tools, and software, and they represent as inclusive a picture of the electronics industry as possible. In fact, last year, due to popular demand, we expanded the category count from nine to 13. We believe that by adding four new categories, we are providing additional bona fide entrants with a chance to win. The new categories are communication functions, multimedia functions, peripherals, and software.

The venue for this year's awards dinner is once again the beautiful Pan Pacific hotel in downtown San Francisco, a fitting locale to celebrate the 12th year of EDN's awards. We're hoping for a terrific turnout to honor this year's winners. At the breakneck pace of our industry's product and technology development, EDN believes it's increasingly important to pause and take time to recognize the truly outstanding innovations in our industry. By awarding a scholarship to the Innovator of the Year's school of choice, EDN is giving back a little something to the industry to which we all owe so much. We at EDN are looking forward to a great celebration in San Francisco and we invite you to join us. Contact Wendy Lizotte at 1-617-558-4460 or wlizotte@cahners.com for ticket information.

As always, we welcome your praise, your comments, and even your (constructive) criticism. You can contact me at 1-617-558-4404 or ahaun@cahners.com.