Ireland’s entrepreneurs, inventors and innovative companies are invited to enter the annual Irish Times Innovation Awards.

Now in the event’s 14th year, the awards celebrate innovation in every sector of Irish society and business, including food and agribusiness, manufacturing, life sciences, sustainability, IT and emerging areas such as AI and fintech.

Over the years, finalists have varied from college spin-outs and kitchen table start-ups through to major corporates, charities and sporting/cultural organisations. The common thread through them all is that they have delivered positive change with an innovative product or process.

Among the recent finalists have been Moocall, an alert system that notifies a farmer about one hour before a cow calves; WholeWorldBand, a recording studio in the cloud that allows music makers around the world collaborate from the comfort of their homes; Parcel Motel, for its solution to the headaches created by people not being home to receive deliveries; BeFree, a range of gluten-free meals; and RedT, for its distributed battery storage solution to support increased usage of intermittent renewable energy sources.

Last year’s overall winner was Class Medical, a spin-out of the University of Limerick, which has designed and implemented a quality safety tool for urinary catheterisation to prevent injury.

Category winners included TradeBid, an online, end-to-end auction platform where car companies and dealers buy and sell vehicles to each other; Future Planet, which offers corporate enterprises a software framework to help them become more sustainable; and HoloToyz, which manufactures augmented reality products for children.

This year’s awards are split into five categories: sustainability (sponsored by Skillnet Ireland); IT and Fintech (sponsored by Mason Hayes & Curran); life sciences and healthcare (sponsored by Science Foundation Ireland); new frontiers (sponsored by UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School); and first-time founder (sponsored by The Irish Times).

The last category seeks to recognise the achievements of people who make that leap into the unknown for the first time, converting their bright idea into a new product or service.

Three finalists from each category will be selected by a panel of judges at the end of September.

The finalists will then pitch their innovation to another high-profile judging panel at the end of October, with the winners of each category, and the overall winner, announced at a special event in mid-November.

The closing date for entries is September 21st and entry is free to all. Find out more information at irishtimes.com/innovationawards

Reporting on: www.irishtimes.com