INNOVATE® Chicago Vol.1

Innovations of the World

INNOVATE® Chicago Vol.1

It’s easy to think that everything there is to know about the Windy City is already out there in the world—Chicago was, after all, the second most-visited US city in 2018 and has remained fertile ground internationally for a variety of industries, from finance to industry to education to transportation and beyond.

But a visit to Chicago is like a canopy tour compared to the root-deep exploration of the city that INNOVATE® Chicago provides. Filled with stories of Chi-Town’s innovators and innovation enablers, this high-end coffee-table book offers an in-depth look into the city’s innovation ecosystem. Every participant—large or small, corporate or nonprofit—is hand-selected for participation in INNOVATE® Chicago. By avoiding a pay-to-play model, we bring you 250+ pages of the authentic, the innovative, the best of Chicago!

In addition to the hardcover coffee-table book, INNOVATE® Chicago is also published as an e-book, with individual stories posted below.

Featured Thought Leaders

Featured Thought Leaders

Featured Innovators

Featured Innovators

A SAFE HAVEN FOUNDATION

A SAFE HAVEN FOUNDATION-OUR MISSION: ASPIRE. TRANSFORM. SUSTAIN.

OUR MISSION: ASPIRE. TRANSFORM. SUSTAIN.

A Safe Haven Foundation is a 501(c)3 not for profit, social enterprise that helps people ASPIRE. TRANSFORM. and SUSTAIN¨ their lives as they transition from homelessness to self-sufficiency with pride and purpose. A Safe Haven provides the tools for each individual to overcome the root causes of homelessness through a...

TOPSTEP

INNOVATORS OF THE WORLD

Our Mission At Topstep, our goal is to be where the world goes to safely engage in and profit from the financial markets. In a nutshell, what we do at Topstep is break down the barriers to entry in what has historically been a very exclusive industry. Our mission is...

CSC CORPTAX

CSC CORPTAX — MORE THAN 45 YEARS OF TAX TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION

MORE THAN 45 YEARS OF TAX TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION

CSC Corptax® provides technology-based tax solutions to corporate tax departments worldwide. We transform tax reporting for clients through software, business process expertise, and award-winning support, helping them achieve breakthrough performance using the first and only single system on the market for end-to-end tax. Our unmatched automation aligns tax processes, enhances...

SHIPBOB

The Trusted Global Omnifulfillment Platform To Scale Your Ecommerce Business And Meet Customer Expectations Everywhere They Shop

ShipBob provides fulfillment services across the US, Canada, UK, Europe, and Australia for orders placed on ecommerce websites, online marketplaces, social media platforms, and through B2B partnerships (in physical stores and retailers’ online stores)....

Enduvo’s

Enduvo’s -No-Code Platform Enables Anyone With the Power to Create and Share Immersive Content Within Their Organizations and the Metaverse

No-Code Platform Enables Anyone With the Power to Create and Share Immersive Content Within Their Organizations and the Metaverse

Enduvo was born at the University of Illinois and initially funded through a Jump Applied Research for Community Health through Engineering and Simulation (ARCHES) grant. These grants support collaborative research and development between OSF Healthcare and the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria. Dr. Matt Bramlet, Justin Drawz,...

AGILEMD

AGILEMD- SOFTWARE SAVES LIVES THROUGH BETTER CARE DECISIONS

SOFTWARE SAVES LIVES THROUGH BETTER CARE DECISIONS

Healthcare providers are overwhelmed and medical protocols change fast. AgileMD ensures that nurses and doctors can rapidly understand a patient’s status and follow the most current clinical best practices to provide optimal care. The company’s software offers real-time predictive analytics and adaptive clinical guidance that is deeply integrated into the...

Aon

Aon-INNOVATION’S ROLE IN A HIGHLY VOLATILE WORLD

INNOVATION’S ROLE IN A HIGHLY VOLATILE WORLD

One of the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic experience is that companies have fundamentally changed the way they look at risk. Risks are more interconnected, so the impact is more profound. For example, increased weather events and supply chain disruptions are happening more frequently and having a greater impact...

MATTER

MATTER-At MATTER

At MATTER, We Help People And Organizations Transform Ideas Into Solutions That Improve The Healthcare Experience

At MATTER — a global innovation hub headquartered in Chicago — entrepreneurs come together with industry leaders, scientists and clinicians from across the globe to collaborate on developing next-generation healthcare technologies. We believe that collaboration between entrepreneurs and industry leaders is the fastest, most effective way to accelerate innovation, advance...

JELLYVISION

JELLYVISION-CELEBRATING THREE DECADES IN CHICAGO TECH

CELEBRATING THREE DECADES IN CHICAGO TECH

WHO IS JELLYVISION?Jellyvision is the benefits engagement platform trusted by companies large and small, including many of the Fortune 500. We’re committed to reinventing how employees choose and use benefits, and our sophisticated technology delights and guides employees to make better decisions — leading them and our customers to more...

CHICAGO FURNITURE BANK

CHICAGO FURNITURE BANK-TURNING HOUSES INTO HOMES SINCE 2018

TURNING HOUSES INTO HOMES SINCE 2018

The mission of the Chicago Furniture Bank (CFB) is to provide dignity, stability, and comfort to Chicagoans facing poverty by allowing our clients to handpick an entire home’s worth of furnishings for free. As the country’s largest furniture bank, we furnish 15 client homes per day through partnerships with our...

BMO

GARY CONKRIGHT

DRIVES INNOVATION WHERE WE WORK AND LIVE

ABOUT BMOFor over 200 years, BMO has been helping individuals and families, small and medium-sized businesses, corporations and institutions that form the backbone of the communities we serve. We are a highly diversified financial services provider, with a deep sense of purpose and a clear strategy for driving strong customer...

REBOOT PARTNERS

REBOOT PARTNERS

REBOOT PARTNERS Reboot Partners helps emerging growth company CEO’s to operate at scale and accelerate global growth—and advises Fortune 1000 executives and multi-national corporations on how to tackle their most challenging issues, by seizing emerging market opportunities, building global partnerships and development initiatives, and leading sustainable digital-transformation programs. From behind-the-scenes...

HABITNU

HABITNU-Set Small Goals

Set Small Goals, Build Life-Lasting Healthy Habits, And Transform Your Life. HabitNu Is Built On Proven Scientific Research

HabitNu is a digital therapeutic technology company that focuses on preventing and managing chronic diseases by helping individuals build new, healthy habits. HabitNu leverages proven scientific goal-setting research to drive new habit formation for the prevention and management of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and hypertension. HabitNu’s approach...

General Assembly

Is A Pioneer In Education And Career Transformation, Specializing In Today’s Most In-Demand Skills

The leading source for training, staffing, and career transitions, General Assembly fosters a flourishing community of professionals pursuing careers they love. What began as a co-working space in Manhattan in 2011 has since evolved into a global education and career development company, with more than 70,000 graduates and 32 campuses...

REVOOU

Searching For Product Information On The Internet In Spanish Isn’t Easy, But Revoou Wants To Change That, At Least For Online Shopping

Revoou is a product review and product recommendation content producer and website that provides Spanish-language online shoppers with independent and trustworthy, easy-to-digest information and comparison tables about products and services to make the most informed online purchasing decisions. It’s a model English-speakers have seen dozens of times, but the team...

LOGGERHEAD TOOLS

LOGGERHEAD TOOLS- Award-Winning American Innovation

Award-Winning American Innovation

LoggerHead Tools’ mission is to create innovative hand tools manufactured in America. The company’s flagship product is the Bionic Wrench™, a tool that combines the convenience of pliers with the performance of a wrench. The company launched the Bionic Wrench at the National Hardware Show in 2005 and has since...

COHESION

We Are Transforming Commercial Real Estate With Smart Building Technology That Enhances The Workplace Experience, Streamlines Operations And Optimizes Revenue In One Single Digital Platform

The Cohesion app fulfills these demands by integrating building systems and IoT devices for seamless interactions in the workplace environment....

ORBIT MEDIA STUDIOS

ORBIT MEDIA STUDIOS-Web Design

Web Design, Development and Optimization with Deep Roots in the City of Chicago

They both grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and met in high school. When Barrett Lombardo and Andy Crestodina graduated, they headed off to the University of Iowa together.   They shared a dorm room and one of those boxy Macintosh computers. It was the early 1990s. Most people...

LITERA

Is Changing The Way Organizations Perfect Their Documents And Manage Transactions.

Litera (then Microsystems) was born in 1995 to solve a specific problem: helping law firms transition their documents from Word Perfect to Microsoft Word....

LEVEL EX

Playing Is Training: Chicago’s Gaming And Healthcare Legacies Meet At Level Ex

Today, Level Ex has 750,000 medical professionals playing its games to advance their skills and earn Continuing Medical Education (CME). The story of how it changed the way medicine is learned and practiced is as much an ode to Chicago as it is a start-up success story....

PRITZKER GROUP

HELPING ENTREPRENEURS ACHIEVE GREATNESS

ABOUT PGVC Pritzker Group, founded by Tony and J.B. Pritzker, has three principal investment teams: Venture Capital, which provides early-stage venture funding to technology companies throughout the United States; Private Capital, which acquires and operates leading North America based companies; and Asset Management, which partners with top-performing investment managers across...

FAST RADIUS

FAST RADIUS-MAKING NEW THINGS POSSIBLE BY TRANSFORMING MANUFACTURING AND SUPPLY CHAINS FOR THE DIGITAL AGE

MAKING NEW THINGS POSSIBLE BY TRANSFORMING MANUFACTURING AND SUPPLY CHAINS FOR THE DIGITAL AGE

OUR STORYFast Radius is a leading cloud manufacturing company. Our Cloud Manufacturing Platform™ is a first-of-its-kind solution that provides end to-end solutions for manufacturers to design, make, and move parts in an easier, more accessible, and more sustainable way. Founded in 2017, Fast Radius is headquartered in Chicago with offices...

RHEAPLY

Rheaply -Working To Make The World’s Resources Visible

Working To Make The World’s Resources Visible, Easily Transferable, And More Valuable In Our Global Marketplace

Rheaply’s platform is helping scale the circular economy — an economic model that emphasizes keeping resources in constant circulation rather than discarding them and adding to landfills. Through its resource exchange platform, Rheaply empowers organizations to better manage, exchange, and track their material resources, helping them save money and eliminate...

BLUEBIST

BLUEBIST-PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS FOR NEW AGE OBSTACLES

PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS FOR NEW AGE OBSTACLES

Blue Bist is a boutique consulting company based in Chicago, IL. We specialize in change management, team dynamics, and operations transformations. We provide fractional and remote COO, CPO, and CTO support to startups and mentor first-time founders on how to scale. We are a diverse, professional, woman-owned business with a...

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The Publisher

Glen Edwards

Glen Edwards was born and raised in Philadelphia. He graduated from Pennsylvania State University and served in the United States Marine Corps Services. For the next 10 years, Glen worked as a Juvenile Probation Officer in Philadelphia, counseling underprivileged children in North and West Philadelphia. In 1983, Glen left the court and went to work... click to read more

The Publisher

Glen Edwards

Glen Edwards was born and raised in Philadelphia. He graduated from Pennsylvania State University and served in the United States Marine Corps Services. For the next 10 years, Glen worked as a Juvenile Probation Officer in Philadelphia, counseling underprivileged children in North and West Philadelphia. In 1983, Glen left the court and went to work... click to read more

Other Ecosystems