BRW lists Planet Innovation as Australia's most innovative company

BRW has released its second list of Australia’s Most Innovative Companies. Topping the list for 2013 is biotech company Planet Innovation, which last year ranked eighth on the list.

This year’s list of 50 companies has been compiled by Melbourne-based innovation consultancy Inventium, led by Amantha Imber. Each company on the list presented at least two innovations, which were judged by examining the problem being solved, the innovative solution and its impact.

“What all companies have in common is that they are implementing some brilliant innovations into the Australian marketplace and, in many cases, the global marketplace,” Imber said.

“Not only were these innovations unique and, in many cases, breakthroughs for their industry, but they had also had a high degree of impact in the short amount of time they have been around.”

Planet Innovation’s founder and CEO, Stuart Elliot, noted that the company was “formed with an innovation process geared around delivering commercially successful products, not just products that look nice or are technically interesting”. The company even has a dedicated innovation manager whose core responsibility is to drive entrepreneurial behaviours within the organisation.

Planet Innovation was this year acknowledged for IVF product Gavi, developed in partnership with Sydney-based IVF group Genea Biomedx. The product automates, for the first time, the process of freezing embryos not immediately transferred back to the mother, but for use in later IVF cycles.

According to Elliot, the current preparation method “relies on the skill of the operator to manipulate the embryo to prepare it for freezing”, with the lab operator looking through a microscope and using a “miniature hockey stick”.

After consultations with IVF labs, Planet Innovation’s team, bolstered by an embryologist, worked for 18 months to create a process to capture an embryo in a small ‘pod’ before freezing. The product has now been launched to the global IVF market and has passed through the US government’s Food and Drug Administration approval process. It will be in labs next year and is said to already be worth $100 million.

The company is now working on other products for the IVF market in partnership with Genea, including time-lapse imaging of embryos.

Planet Innovation was founded by Elliot in 2009 and has had an average annual sales growth of 127% over the past three years. The company derives its revenue in several ways: it might perform straight fee-for-service consulting work; build intellectual property from scratch and find a partner to help commercialise that technology; or help a company solve an IP problem as part of a commercial arrangement (as it has done with Genea).