Greene Turbine Voted Most Innovative Company At TTDC's Tennessee NEXT Conference
Greene Turbine was voted the winner of Tennessee Technology Development Corporation’s (TTDC) Venture Showcase competition, which was part of the 2011 Tennessee NEXT Conference held in Nashville on May 5-6. Greene Turbine was one of 28 companies from the fields of life sciences/healthcare, technology/electronics, digital media/entertainment and alternative energy/sustainability who pitched their ideas to a panel of judges at the conference.
As the winner, TTDC granted Memphis-based Greene Turbine a $25,000 business development award. The company has designed a novel engine turbine that can produce electricity while submerged in rivers or oceanic streams. Greene Turbine also won a $10,000 award during the first stage of the Venture Showcase competition.
Other winners in the first stage of the competition that received $10,000 business development awards were:
• Work For Pie, a Memphis-based company that allows software developers and technical content producers to create an online showcase of their skills and work;
• How’s the Living, a Knoxville-based company that operates the website howstheliving.com, which provides an online community for college students; and
• Care Technology Systems, a Nashville-based company that provides a cost-effective solution to remotely monitor the well-being of the elderly or disabled people living independently.
The Venture Showcase competition awards will be used by the companies to build their businesses and are a part of TTDC’s Technology Maturation Fund program, which provides commercialization grants to inventors and entrepreneurs to help move promising technologies through early-stage development in order to attract additional investor support or secure third‐party licensing. The awards are given on a competitive basis to for-profit entities and innovators affiliated with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the Tennessee Board of Regents, the Tennessee Independent Colleges and Universities Association, the University of Tennessee System, Vanderbilt University and the Y‐12 National Security Complex.
