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.
Skout Strategy
George Carter found a fondness for agriculture while cultivating cannabis in the valleys of northern California.
The University of New Mexico graduate has spent much of the past 15 years working in horticulture, whether that was with a California medicinal cannabis company or leading global sales for Sananbio, a larger agriculture firm. His experience growing cannabis and selling vertical indoor farming equipment planted the seed of an idea in his mind: Why not use that agriculture experience to help cities, companies or organizations set up their own indoor agriculture projects?
That seed would eventually sprout into Skout Strategy, an Albuquerque ag-tech startup that Carter and co-founder Jessica Shoemaker launched in 2021. The firm advises customers on setting up indoor farm projects, from site feasibility to farm design to equipment selection and procurement.
One of its customers is New York City-based Allwell Greens, a company growing a mix of Asian vegetables, including bok choy and Chinese broccoli, in an indoor greenhouse. Skout Strategy has worked with Allwell throughout the New York company's growth, Carter said, from idea to iteration.
"It's been one of the first times we've been able to get a viewpoint from the beginning to the end and watch that entire process play out," he said.
That's one example of how Skout Strategy's business model works. The co-founders' mix of expertise — Carter with sales and management and Shoemker with farming and cultivation — helps the pair show customers how they can grow indoors most effectively while navigating buying equipment and managing different regulations.
Carter said it's a system that allows controlled environment agriculture to be accessible to everyone.
"We often warn people away at the beginning of how hard this is going to be," Shoemaker said. "As much as we help simplify the process, it's not going to be easy.
"Success is seeing people get their tech, have their building up and start operation," she added. "That's the meaningful part of it."
And now, Skout Strategy wants to expand the system it's grown. Toviah HJ Carter, George Carter's wife, recently joined the two founders as the startup's director of customer journey, and she's helped Skout Strategy roll out its first storytelling-focused marketing campaign, dubbed The Pivot Circle.
That campaign matches the startup's ethos — helping innovate how people get their food.
"I feel like we are working on an area of the food system that is growing and changing and adapting," George Carter said. "We have climate change bearing down on us, we have unstable economic scenarios bearing down on us, and the reality is the weight of all of that is putting a lot of pressure on the current structure of our food system.
"In order to continue to be a thriving species, we have to evolve the way we grow food," he continued. "Not saying that vertically grown food is the way of the future, but I do think controlled environment agriculture is going to be a huge component of food production in the future."
