Innovation is a broad term, even by its own definition: "the introduction of something new."
We believe each of this year's Innovation Awards honorees match that definition perfectly. Whether it's inventing a crime-stopping technology, paving the way for Indigenous entrepreneurship or breaking outside the clothing binary, they are all innovating in their own ways.
This year's New Mexico Inno special edition comes with the same concept and the same focus as the 2022 Fire Awards, but with a new name — the Innovation Awards. In light of the devastating fires that spread across large swaths of New Mexico last year, we felt it important to rebrand this annual section.
The Innovation Awards recipients were selected by the Albuquerque Business First editorial team and New Mexico Inno Reporter Jacob Maranda. The process was based on reader nominations and our own insights. Some of the things we looked for when evaluating organizations were: new funding, adding headcount, social and community impact, product launches, company pivots/growth and stories of innovators reshaping the ecosystem.
In the end we chose five honorees, a mix of companies and organizations each carving their own path and helping to drive New Mexico's economy forward.
All five of the honorees are featured in the April 28 print edition of Business First. Each profile will also be rolled out online in the coming days.
Perspective Components
In the middle of March, a bat-wielding vandal shattered the windshields of nearly three dozen cars parked in a garage under Downtown Albuquerque's Civic Plaza, KRQE reported.
There, at the time, was Erik Strobert, the founder and CEO of Albuquerque-based security tech company Perspective Components Inc. He was installing units of his company's smart microphone technology, called NoiseVu, when the vandal chased him and his car out of the garage.
While Strobert said in a LinkedIn post that he left unscathed, the multitude of targeted cars didn't fare as well. That might not have been the case, he said, if he and his team would have finished installing the smart microphones, which went active in the garage the following week.
The NoiseVu microphones are pieces of technology that use a machine learning model to detect various abnormal noises like gunshots, car accidents, verbal aggression, speeding or even catalytic converter theft, for example.
Those microphones can connect with existing cameras and send real-time alerts to on-site security, Strobert told Albuquerque Business First.
And the company is developing a partnership to integrate the smart microphone technology with existing dispatch software that police, and law enforcement agencies use, he said.
One dozen of the cameras are currently installed in the Civic Plaza parking garage, split between two floors. Those cameras are placed "ubiquitously," Strobert said, covering all parking spaces.
"We're basically listening for any event that would necessitate a response from law enforcement or security," he said.
But Strobert doesn't plan to stop at that Downtown garage. He's targeting both public and private customers that operate high-traffic facilities in Albuquerque and other cities across the Southwest.
Those smart microphones fit a market that doesn't see a lot of existing innovation, Strobert added. He said the company has focused on its technological development to take advantage of that more nascent security tech market.
"I don't want to sacrifice the level of service that we're providing to our customers or the performance level of the technology to go chase capital," Strobert said. "We'd rather actually build a strong business and then get that business funded based on its principles."
That technology is outcome-oriented, too, Strobert said — an important factor, he added, when competing products have seen mixed results.
"Our goal is to create a technology that our customers, whether they're a city or a private entity, can point to the results and say, 'This is why we work with NoiseVu.'"
