Australian journalist Peter Greste will be among the recipients of the Tribeca Film Festival’s sixth annual Disruptive Innovation Awards.
Inspired by Harvard Business School Professor Clay Christensen’s ground-breaking theory of disruptive innovation, the awards celebrate innovators who have broken the mould to significantly impact industries and business models in traditional and non-traditional domains including sports, media, healthcare, social justice, education, politics and entertainment.
Previous honorees were Jack Dorsey for Square (2010), Garrett Camp for Uber (2013), DARPA’s drone Hummingbird (2012), Psy’s YouTube record-breaking views for Gangnam Style (2013), and Scooter Braun’s SB Management for cultivating artists including Justin Bieber (2012).
Al Jazeera English correspondent Greste spent 400 days as a political prisoner in Egypt. He accepted a Royal Television Society award on behalf of himself and his jailed colleagues Mohamed Fadel Fahmy and Baher Mohammad , for their sacrifices to journalism.
The awards will be presented at the Tribeca Performing Arts Centre in New York on Friday April 24. The Tribeca Film Festival runs April 15 – 26.
The 2015 honourees include Airbnb, the trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique accommodations around the world – online or from a mobile phone; Shane Smith, founder and CEO of global youth media brand VICE, critically-acclaimed journalist, host and producer, and one of the industry’s most respected visionaries; Jake Burton, founder of Burton Snowboards, a company that has played a pivotal role in growing snowboarding from a backyard hobby to a world-class sport; Rent The Runway, a fashion company with a technology soul that is disrupting the way women get dressed; and Girls Who Code, a national non-profit organization working to close the gender gap in technology and prepare young women for jobs of the future.
Other recipients include Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation who oversees more than $12 billion in assets, including $500 million annually in global social justice grants; and Formula E Racing, a new FIA single-seater championship and the world's first fully-electric racing series. Additional honorees include Jason Silva, Advance Care Planning at Gundersen Health Systems, Peek.com’s Ruzwana Bashir, Bloomberg News reporter Mary Childs, wheelchair moto-cross athlete Aaron “Wheelz” Fotheringham, Brad Katsuyama of IEX, littleBits, the David Lynch Foundation, Operation Smile’s Dr. Bill Magee, Georgette Mulheir of Lumos, Alec Momont of Drones for Good, Nanotronics Imaging, Alyse Nelson of Vital Voices, Scribd, Tampon Run and HIV researcher Nicole Ticea.