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

FORECHECK

FORECHECK-THE SECRET WEAPON IN WINNING THE CYBERCRIME WAR

THE SECRET WEAPON IN WINNING THE CYBERCRIME WAR

Cyber security is an arms race that is positioned to continue indefinitely. New technologies are constantly emerging to combat cyber criminals, but regardless, criminals discover how to exploit them. Managed Detection and Response (MDR) and other security-focused vendors detect many of these attacks and alert their customers and the community,...

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...

HALO

HALO-Impact Before Profit: Halo’s Mission to Transform the World of Investing

Impact Before Profit: Halo’s Mission to Transform the World of Investing

Halo Investing has built the first global marketplace for protective investments, empowering. Through the Halo platform, advisors and investors can easily access structured notes, buffered ETFs, annuities, and a whole suit of tools allowing them to customize, analyze, and manage protective investments tailored to their unique portfolio needs. Halo’s mission...

AZUMO

AZUMO-Manufacturer of LCD 2.0

Manufacturer of LCD 2.0, A Breakthrough Display Technology Revolutionizing A $130B Industry

Displays have become ubiquitous in our society. We find them in smartphones, tablets, laptops, TVs, drive through restaurants, ATM machines, thermostats, gas station pumps…the list is endless. Even still, there are notable negative impacts of displays which we have become accustomed to – excessive power consumption, subpar viewability in bright...

Sage Corps

Sage Corps- Is An International Internship Program That Sends Students To Work With Startups. We’re Building The Next Gen Global Workforce

Is An International Internship Program That Sends Students To Work With Startups. We’re Building The Next Gen Global Workforce

In 2003, Matt Meltzer graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania. He thought employers would line up to hire him. He was wrong. With zero job offers, Matt flew down to South America with a backpack. After living and working in Buenos Aires for one year, Matt returned...

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,...

ENVOY

ENVOY- MAKES HIRING AND MANAGING AN INTERNATIONAL WORKFORCE A SEAMLESS EXPERIENCE

MAKES HIRING AND MANAGING AN INTERNATIONAL WORKFORCE A SEAMLESS EXPERIENCE

Envoy is a global immigration services provider offering the only immigration management platform that makes it seamless for companies to hire and manage an international workforce. We combine expert legal representation and proprietary technology to bring efficiency and transparency to the immigration process for employers and employees.   At Envoy...

CREATING IT FUTURES

CREATING IT FUTURES-Satisfying

Satisfying, Well-Paying Tech Jobs Abound

The acute shortage of technology workers in the United States has driven up wages significantly. The median annual salary of an entry-level employee working on a help desk is $53,470, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The median salary for all tech workers is $81,000. The expected growth...

PROMOTABLE

PROMOTABLE- Offers Expert Led

Offers Expert Led, In Person And Live-Online Courses For In-Demand Digital Skills Like Data Analytics And Python Programming. Conveniently Scheduled And Designed To Help Busy Professionals Advance Their Careers

It has become very fashionable over the last few years to talk about being “data-driven” or using “big data.” Companies are pouring billions of dollars into developing tools and hiring talent to get more from their data so they can find the insights, new customers, and behaviors that can help...

TIMEDOC HEALTH

TIMEDOC HEALTH-NOW THERE’S TIME FOR EVERYONE

NOW THERE’S TIME FOR EVERYONE

Providers have too much to do and not enough time to do it. And the people this really impacts are their most vulnerable patients. TimeDoc Health makes it easier for overstretched providers to support chronically ill patients between visits – while also maximizing reimbursements. They do this by combining the...

CHICAGO CONNECTORY

CHICAGO CONNECTORY-THE CENTRAL HUB OF IOT AND INNOVATION IN CHICAGO

THE CENTRAL HUB OF IOT AND INNOVATION IN CHICAGO, LEADING THE INITIATIVE AROUND THE WORLD

The Chicago Connectory is a co-creation space and IoT incubator located in Chicago’s historic Merchandise Mart. Our co-working space builds business, collaboration, and network opportunities to our community. The Chicago Connectory opened its doors in May 2017. The idea for the Chicago Connectory sparked with Bosch, a multinational engineering and...

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....

SITTERCITY

SITTERCITY

As the first and largest digital platform for finding in-home care, Sittercity, a Bright Horizons company, has come a long way since 2001. , We were the first to make online child care an employee benefit and we continue to connect millions of parents with babysitters and nannies every year....

CHICAGO HOPES FOR KIDS

CHICAGO HOPES FOR KIDS - IS CHANGING ACADEMIC TRAJECTORIES FOR STUDENTS EXPERIENCING HOMELESSNESS

IS CHANGING ACADEMIC TRAJECTORIES FOR STUDENTS EXPERIENCING HOMELESSNESS

Chicago HOPES for Kids is the only organization in Chicago that provides educational after school and remote learning programs for students experiencing homelessness in grades Kindergarten through 9th, directly to the shelters and communities where they live. It is our mission to provide students with the resources and encouragement they...

BOUNCE CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION

BOUNCE CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION-From Surviving To Thriving

From Surviving To Thriving, The Lives Of Chronically Ill Children, And Their Families, Are Transformed

A HIDDEN EPIDEMIC: Ten-year-old Tyler feels more like a “patient” than a “person.” Despite fourteen surgeries, he remains bright, inquisitive, fun, funny. But, Tyler can’t talk due to a tracheotomy. He travels with a portable suction to keep his lungs open, and never knows when he’ll be back in Intensive...

ADLER PLANETARIUM

ADLER PLANETARIUM-LOOKING UP TOGETHER

LOOKING UP TOGETHER- Original sky shows in the museum’s two domed theaters encourage guests to look up at the wonders of the universe.

Astronomy and space science are rich with breakthrough discoveries and big questions about the universe and our place in it. In this digital age, stunning imagery and detailed information is readily available—anyone with an internet connection can dive deep into any topic that piques their interest. In an information-saturated world,...

SIWA THERAPEUTICS

SIWA THERAPEUTICS-We Founded SIWA

We Founded SIWA, Drawing Upon An Understanding Of Aging And The AGEs, To Combat Cancer

SIWA Therapeutics, Inc. has developed 318H, a monoclonal antibody that we believe can become a broadly effective cancer immunotherapeutic. Most recently, we showed that 318H enabled complete remission of pancreatic cancer in vivo in humanized mice – we hope to file an IND application for pancreatic cancer next year. Our...

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....

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...

Devbridge

Devbridge- Is A Digital Product And Technology Consultancy Focused On Enterprise Transformation And Custom Software Development

Is A Digital Product And Technology Consultancy Focused On Enterprise Transformation And Custom Software Development

WHO WE AREDevbridge is a technology partner for forward-thinking Global 2000 companies looking to shift to a product-centric operating model. We build extraordinary custom software that delivers measurable results for our clients and their customers.   Using our proven methodology, data-informed strategy, and proprietary Devbridge Apollo toolkit, we not only...

STEADFAST

MAKING IT WORK

Steadfast began in 1998 as an internet-technology passion project for Steadfast’s Founder, Karl Zimmerman, when he was only 14 years old. Karl’s dream to help companies with their data hosting and security needs started early on, and through these relationships, Karl learned there was a frustrating gap with many hosting...

ACTIVECAMPAIGN

ACTIVECAMPAIGN-We Help Businesses Grow and Build Better Customer Experiences

We Help Businesses Grow and Build Better Customer Experiences

ActiveCampaign is the leader in Customer Experience Automation (CXA), helping businesses across the world meaningfully engage with their customers. Our platform gives businesses of all sizes access to 820+ prebuilt automations that combine email marketing, marketing automation and CRM for powerful segmentation and personalization across social, email, messaging, chat and...

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....

YMCA OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO

YMCA OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO-WELCOME TO THE WORLD’S OLDEST INCUBATOR. THE YMCA OF METRO CHICAGO IS INNOVATING FROM THE INSIDE

WELCOME TO THE WORLD’S OLDEST INCUBATOR. THE YMCA OF METRO CHICAGO IS INNOVATING FROM THE INSIDE

In 2022, the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago celebrated its 164th birthday. There are only a handful of organizations in the country with that kind of history. But all those candles on the cake are not merely a reminder of accomplishments passed. It’s also a light leading the way forward, illuminating...

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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