This week the Innovation Awards reaches its zenith, with two events in which the best shortlisted concepts will be awarded with the prestigious Blue Tulip for the Innovation Awards 2010! Today, November 2nd, the focus is on the Media, Communications & High Tech industries. The events will take place in Amsterdam, at Pakhuis de Zwijger.

The question on everyone’s lips is, who will be following in the footsteps of Layar, last year’s Blue Tulip winner? The remarkable success story of Layar since winning the Blue Tulip in 2009, might provide some insight in to what awaits the potential winners of this year. Layar – an augmented reality-browser for mobile phones which places a digital layer on top of the camera image on your mobile device – was given €40.000 of media attention last year. Since then, Layar received very positive press coverage, amongst others in the article ‘Europe’s 25 most creative companies’ by CNBC Business-magazine. In June of this year, Layar broke through the 1 million user barrier.

Claire Boonstra, founding partner of Layar, reminisces “It was unbelievably fun to win the Innovation Awards, even more so because the award did not only apply to the mobile industry. The participants were quite diverse. The conversations I had shortly after having been awarded the Blue Tulip, people became inspired to start their own Enterprises, in my opinion that is the best result.”

The first winners of this year, will be announced on 15.00, where the best concepts in the categories Mobile, Connected Device, Digital Home and Gaming will be awarded the price for best category concept.

Later, at 15.45, the winners of the remaining three categories will be unveilled. Shortly after 16.00, one company in each of the categories Lifestyle, Green and Web will be a winner of the Innovation Awards 2010.

Shortly after 18.00, the two most prestigious awards will be presented to the overall winner of the Blue Tulip (jury award), and the winner of the public price. 5 shortlisted concepts are in the running, amongst which:

Appie is an application which helps customers visiting the website of Albert Heijn with their smartphone to remember, choose and remember their groceries.
Catawiki is a worldwide trading platform for collector’s items on which trading occurs based on a central catalogue.
Shapeways is an online marketplace where consumers can design affordable, customized products.
TenPages.com is the first crowdfundingconcept in the booksector.
Tiktegel is an interactive learning tool which can be best described as a gaming computer with an A3 sized TagTiles board, which enables educational games in many different shapes and forms, addressing language, math and cognitive skills.

See the entire program on the program & event page of our partner Triqle or on the Innovation Awards calendar page.

Whether you are present at the event itself or at home or work, whether you’re nominated for an award or just interested in the latest trends on innovation, you can follow everything what happens live by following hashtag #AIA10 on Twitter, and by reading in-depth reports on all the activities and seeing the latest interviews with the nominees and winners on www.accenture-blogpodium.nl. For those of you who literally do not want to miss a single minute, watch the live feed of the event on Frankwatching.