On Thursday evening (3 September 2015) a judging panel headed by Sir Richard Branson and Apple Co-Found Steve Wozniak announced the winners of the Talent Unleashed Awards 2015.
Tech start-up Andiamo were crowned ‘One to Watch in 2016’ and for the first time in the history of the Unleashed Awards the category for the ‘Most Disruptive CIO’ ended in a tie between, Graham Benson, CIO, Rentalcars.com and Phil Jordan, Group CIO, Telefonica. The average scores from a panel of 6 judges which included Branson and Wozniak couldn’t separate the two.
This means Jordan, Benson and representatives from Andiamo will be invited to Sydney to attend the Global Talent Unleashed final on September 11. During the Global Awards, Sir Richard Branson will be present to personally judge the UK winners alongside regional winners from across the globe, with one global winner winning the trip of a lifetime to join Sir Richard for 5 days on Necker Island.
Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak sat as part of the judging panel for the second year and reflecting on the awards he said: I’m delighted to be involved again this year as a judge for the Talent Unleashed Awards. The quality of the entries seems to get stronger as does the geographical spread which includes Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the UK.
“It was a great to see so much new talent getting discovered as result of the Talent Unleashed Awards. The ideas were so diverse and deserving of recognition so well and congratulations to you and I think we all want to thank Talent, Richard Earl, and his team for bringing these awards to life, nice work guys!”
Reflecting on the award, Phil Jordan, Group CIO of Telefonica said: “I am delighted that the impact of disruptive IT at Telefonica had been recognised. The Talent Unleashed Award for Most Disruptive CIO comes about because of a great team and bold business leadership. Telefonica now has every market (19 countries) in its portfolio involved in fundamental business transformation enabled by exploiting new technology. This is being implemented in a rapid process of learn and leverage and leads the way in our industry.”
Grahan Benson, CIO of Rentalcars.com, said:
“Rentalcars.com is an innovative player in the fragmented car rental market and offers a unique customer proposition. We are built on being disruptive and therefore we encourage and embrace innovation throughout the business, actively investing in creativity throughout the organisation. This accolade from Talent Unleashed is testament not to me but to the great technology team that we have within the business coupled with the vision and leadership shown by the Leadership Team in embracing disruptive change.”
Already on their way to Sydney are the winners of the ‘One to Watch 2016’, Andiamo combined 3D printing + 3D scanning + biomechanical models to increase speed and accuracy in the supply and production of braces and support equipment to aid people with disabilities.
Co-founder of Adiamo, Lee Provoost, who collected the award on the night, said: “Andiamo is building and delivering an integrated clinical service and software platform that uses 3D scanning, 3D printing, and predictive analytics to create custom orthoses for disabled children. Our mission is to provide a medically effective orthosis to every child and adult that needs one globally, within a week of their need. Our service is able to reduce wait times to get an orthosis from 6 months (by which time the child has often outgrown it) to a week. We are delighted to be recognised by Talent Unleashed for the progress we have made so far.”
The Talent Unleashed Awards are organised by leading IT recruitment company, Talent International. UK CEO Jonathan Butterfield said that the Awards spoke loudly about the increasing amount of resourcefulness, participation and imagination in the UK technologies scene.
“The entries for this year’s awards far surpassed our expectations. It’s amazing to see the depth of talent and innovation that exists within the UK tech sector and this is evidenced every year by the depth and quality of the Talent Unleashed entries.
All of our finalists can be rightly proud of their achievement in making it to the UK final and for the winners – this is just the start of their journey – next stop Sydney where the eyes of the tech world will be focused on them” he said.
– See more at: http://talentunleashedawards.co.uk/winners-disruptive-cio-one-watch-2016/#sthash.vBbdx8TP.dpuf