Dateline Davos: Technology Pioneers

My favorite thing to do at Davos is to help facilitate the Technology Pioneers program.  Each year the Forum invites two to three dozen technology entrepreneurs to come to the Davos meeting, to share their visions and participate in the dialog.

This year we held a workshop where 20 of these pioneers pitched their company and technology to a table full of Forum participants, after which the room voted out their top choices for most warranting additional investment.  The five companies voted to have the most investment-worthy technologies were:

1. Amyris Biotechnologies Inc, enginnering microbes to cost-effectively produce high volumes of high-value complex molecules--essentially bugs as factories.

2. ThereVitae Ltd, developing cardiac tissue from adult stem cells for use in heart attack therapies.

3. Energy Innovations, halving the cost of solar power through photo-concentrator systems.

4. EnOcean GmbH, producing battery-less sensors that harvest the energy they need from sources in their immediate local environment.

5. MBA Polymers, a lowest-cost producer of plastic leveraging next-generation recyling technology.

Check 'em out!