Planet Innovation’s Managing Director Stuart Elliott was named a regional winner in the EY Entrepreneur of The Year awards at a gala event in Melbourne, Australia on September 5th, 2013.
Stuart founded Planet Innovation with three others in 2009 because he saw a fundamental flaw in how most product development consultancies worked.
“I wanted to build a company that was focused on the commercial success of my clients’ products, rather than just being focused on satisfying a technical specification. We often have skin in the game with our clients, which means we can reduce the upfront development cost for our clients and share in the upside when the product succeeds in the market. You can only take this approach when you have confidence in the commercial success of the products you develop,” Stuart explained.
“The main ingredient to Planet Innovation’s success has been an uncompromising approach to only hiring the very best people. For Planet Innovation that means hiring people who are commercially savvy as well as technically brilliant.” said Stuart.
Planet Innovation provides innovation, product development, and commercialization services to biomedical and hi-tech companies around the world. They recently drew worldwide acclaim for partnering with Sydney-based Genea Biomedx and developing the world’s first automated instrument for IVF vitrification, which is the process of freezing human embryos.
In addition to developing products for other companies, Planet Innovation also develops its own products including Ingeni, the first in-home energy monitor that helps consumers choose the cheapest energy plans based on their actual electricity usage rather than estimating their energy consumption patterns.
Planet Innovation has grown from four people in 2009 to over 90 people in just four years and was ranked as Australia’s 8th Most Innovative Company by BRW in 2012.
Stuart will join fellow nominees representing Victoria at the national award ceremony on November 21st in Sydney.
