Thirty-one Tech Companies To Watch

Rodolfo Lara-Torres and Olivier Schwab, the outgoing and incumbent head of the Technology Pioneer Program at the World Economic Forum.

The Technology Pioneers for 2011 have been chosen by the World Economic Forum in Geneva, Switzerland, and will be recognized for the achievement during the Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Tianjin, People’s Republic of China, Sept. 13 to Sept. 15.

The innovative companies are: Adimab, Aster Data, Atlassian, Digital Lumens, Ecovative Design, Ferrate Treatment Technologies, Flexoresearch Group, foursquare, GetJar, Ion Torrent, Knewton, Layar, Medicine in Need, Molecular Partners, NetQin Mobile, Neuronetics, Novacem, On-Ramp Wireless, OpenDNS, OPOWER, Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies, Quintas Renewable Energy Solutions, ReputationDefender, Scribd, SecondMarket, Spotify, TaKaDu, Tendril, Topell Energy, Transonic Combustion, Vortex Engineering.

To be selected a company must be involved in the development of a major technology and/or innovation and have the potential for long-term impact on business and society. In addition, it must demonstrate visionary leadership and show all the signs of being a long-standing and sustainable market leader – and its technology must be proven.

Previous winners include 23andme (2008), Amyris Biotechnologies (2006), BloomEnergy (2010) Dr Reddy Laboratories (2001), Google (2001), Gridpoint (2008), Kaspersky Lab (2001), Mozilla Corporation (2007), Nanosolar (2007) and Twitter (2010).

This year, forum members received more than 330 applications from around the world and those were then evaluated by 68 global technology experts. Thirteen countries include Australia, Canada, India, Israel, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Nigeria, People’s Republic of China, South Africa, Switzerland, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Over half are from the U.S.

The Technology Pioneers 2011 represent a diverse range of interests from antibody discovery and optimization platforms, augmented reality, faster and cheaper genome sequencing, location-based social networking, on-line security and reputation management, smart energy solutions, and water management and treatment.

For a complete list, plus selected video interviews with CEOs, founders and chief scientists and more, visit www.weforum.org/techpioneers.

“The World Economic Forum is proud to recognize an outstanding group of innovative companies as Technology Pioneers for 2011,” said André Schneider, managing director and COO, WEF. “Their technologies and business models will have a durable and valuable effect in several industries and society as a whole. We look forward to their unique contributions to the mission of the forum: improving the state of the world.”

World Economic Forum Channels New Media

More and more business people and world leaders are seeing the power of YouTube and blogs for broadcasting ideas.

Now viewers can comment on the video proceedings of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos -"Shaping the Post-Crisis World" - Jan. 28 to 1 Feb. 2009. (The WEF YouTube slot had some 83,087 channel views as of Jan. 26.)

The WEF is an independent international organization incorporated as a foundation in 1971, and is based in Geneva, Switzerland. For a list of global corporate business leaders attending the event see this link.

This year two “citizen reporters” from MySpace and YouTube are invited to the annual gathering in Davos following online contests on both sites. Reports will be filed to their respective communities using the MySpace and YouTube platforms.

Rebecca McQuigg from Los Angeles, California, represents the MySpace community; Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post; Frank Luntz, communications specialist and political consultant; and Chris DeWolfe, CEO and co-founder of MySpace.

McQuigg receives an all-expense-paid travel to/from Davos and will report by blogging/vlogging on MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/myspacejournal), and on the Wall Street Journal online.

Follow the forum exchange of ideas on Twitter at http://twitter.com/davos or Qik (mobile live video news) or visit the Davos Universe at http://www.netvibes.com/davosconversation.


The WEF is committed to improving the state of the world by "engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas." Its mission is impartial and not-for-profit; and is "tied to no political, partisan or national interests."

President Deploys Technology To Communicate

Follow President Barack Obama through the day via Twitter using Tumblr. (Tumblr is a conversational-style real-time platform, sort of a scrapbook for the historic day.)

From the Official Presidential Inaugural Committee Twitter log, "We're using Tumblr to create a dedicated feed of Obama-Biden Inaugural content for the blog today http://bit.ly/2ob5EQ"

See http://twitter.com/obamainaugural for other real-time communications called "tweets" and see how the potential of communication technology is deployed by the incoming staff and President.

Twitter, Tweet, Hard to Beat

Heard of Twitter?

A networking tool in real-time, the way people use this new form of communication is still developing.

To sample the conversations and applications, see http://search.twitter.com/search and enter a search word. Look for jobs, people, or just "listen" to the back-and-forth talk blips, called "tweets."