The AIA winners, Singapore Nov 2007
The past few weeks I’ve been interviewing and writing up the finalists for the Asian Innovation Awards and the Global Entrepolis awards, which are organized in part by my employer, The Wall Street Journal. It’s the third time I’ve done it, and while it’s great to interview them over the phone this was the first time I got to see all of them in the flesh.
The drive to innovate is a weird thing; if I had to identify one thing they’ve all got in common it’s that they’re all their own people. Not a blazing insight, I grant you, but they were characters in their own way, some quiet, some not so quiet, and it was frankly a pleasure to listen to their stories and then try to write them up.
Here are the WSJ.com stories (free access!) which appeared in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal Asia:
“Innovator Finds Clever Way to Wash Water” (gold winner – Australia)
“Creating Empowerment Through Cow Dung” (silver winner – Bangladesh)
“Rickshaws Drive Entrepreneurship” (bronze winner – India)
“GES Winner Stifles Bollywood Piracy” (GES winner – India)