April 21st, 2014

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(NEW YORK, NY) April 21, 2014 —The Tribeca Film Festival (TFF), in association with noted Harvard Business School Professor Clay Christensen and Tribeca’s Craig Hatkoff, who are co-founders of the Disruptor Foundation, announced it will hold the fifth annual Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards.  The fifth edition, co-sponsored by Accenture and AT&T will be hosted at NYU Skirball Center for Performing Arts, on Friday April 25th. The Tribeca Film Festival runs from April 16th to 27th.

The Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards celebrates two dozen honorees whose ideas have broken the mold to create significant impact beyond the original technological and industrial realms into the fields of healthcare, education, international development, politics and advocacy, media, the arts and entertainment.  This year, the ceremony includes several awards including the Lifetime Achievement Award.  Being honored for Class of 2014 Lifetime Achievement is Jay Walker, curator and chairman of TEDMED.  TEDMED is the sole independent licensee of the world-famous TED organization, whose online talks have over one billion views. Walker is also the founder of three companies that serve more than 50 million customers each, including Priceline. 

“At NYU Tisch School of the Arts, we prize creative innovation and disruptive thinking for their power to create value,” said Mary Schmidt Campbell, Dean of NYU Tisch School of Performing Arts.  “We are excited to host this year’s Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards at Skirball Center for Performing Arts, and thrilled that our students will share in this unique learning experience.”

Rick Rubin and Kanye West will be not be attending this year’s awards, but will be shown live at the event accepting the Roland 808's award for contribution to hip hop.
Other honorees include JC Curleigh and Amanda Palmer, two of the several honorees who have been newly selected since the first dozen were announced in February by Tribeca Film Festival.  James Curleigh, President of the Levi’s® brand, is responsible for leading the strategic direction and execution of the Levi’s® brand globally with a focus on product creation, marketing concepts, and market solutions. His role is to drive this iconic brand confidently into the future. Curleigh has more than 20 years of experience building and expanding consumer brands around the world. He previously acted as President and CEO of KEEN Footwear, Inc. as well as President and CEO of Salomon Sports North America. He also established and led TaylorMade adidas golf division in Europe and held various leadership positions at M&M Mars. Curleigh is a triple citizen of the USA, Canada, and the UK.

Amanda Palmer, widely known as “The Social Media Queen of Rock-N-Roll” is also being recognized.  Her constant and disarmingly intimate engagement with her fans via her blog, Tumblr, and Twitter (800,000+ followers), and has been at the vanguard of using both “direct to fan” and “pay what you want” (patronage) business models to build and run her business. In May of 2012 she made international news when she raised nearly $1.2 million pre-selling her new album, Theatre is Evil, along with related merchandise and “experiences” via Kickstarter. Theatre is Evil went on to debut in the “Billboard Top 10” when it was released on Sept. 11, 2012, and has been released in over 20 countries on her own label, 8ft records.  Provocative, irreverent, controversial and wildly creative, Amanda Palmer is a fearless singer, songwriter, playwright, blogger and an audaciously expressive pianist who simultaneously embraces – and explodes – traditional frameworks of music, theater and art.  Amanda was invited to present a “TED Talk” at TED’s 2013 Conference. To date her Talk, “The Art of Asking”, has been viewed more than 4 million times worldwide.

Yael Cohen, founder of Fuck Cancer is being honored with the Henry IV Prize.  Fuck Cancer is a cancer education organization aiming to activate Gen-Y to engage with their parents about early detection, preventative lifestyles and communication around cancer. Yael launched Fuck Cancer in 2009 after her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Now at four years old, Fuck Cancer creates unique tools and campaigns that people can relate to, using technology, humor, and celebrities to enable their community to engage with cancer on a different level.  Wochit, based in New York, is being honored with the Gutenberg Prize for is disruptive potential in the field of journalism. The cloud based video creation platform enables brands and storytellers to instantly react to any story and economically scale branded, studio-quality video production.
The 2014 Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards, inspired by the Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen, aim to emphasize applications of and advancements in disruptive innovation theory that have extended beyond the original technology and industrial realm.  The original disruptive theory is evolving, impacted by a digitally connected world and the growing potential to use the role of identity, worldviews and values as formidable variables in innovation theory.  This theory works as a means of social reciprocity being applied to pressing global issues such as education, philanthropy, politics, religion and spirituality.

Last year at the awards Professor Christensen identified three areas desperately in need of disruption:  parenting, terrorism and religion.  This year’s awards reflect Christensen's call to action.  In particular Pope Francis has been identified by the Awards as a powerful innovator and, somewhat surprisingly, as an astute economist who appears intimately familiar with Adam Smith's magnum opus, The Theory of Moral Sentiments.  The Pope has been named the recipient of the Adam Smith Prize that is presented at the awards by the Harvard Business Review.  The Awards also has recognized Pope Francis' Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, as its 2014 Book of the Year.  The new Pope's recent comments on capitalism seem to reflect Smith's realization that no economic system can be successful without a strong moral foundation and personal accountability. 
“We are delighted to have collaborated with Clay over the past five years to identify and celebrate the theory’s anomalies, black swans and outliers that have led to new lenses for rethinking the original theory particularly in domains where identity, worldviews, values and beliefs play a significant role in theory’s predictive power.” said Craig Hatkoff.
Honorees receive ball-pein hammers as the official award nicknamed Maslow’s Silver Hammer, in honor of psychologist Abe Maslow. Maslow, whose hierarchy of needs has become part of the disruptive innovation 2.0 framework, and is noted for his famous quote “When your only tool is a hammer, every problem starts looking like a nail” that embodies the spirit of the awards.
Breakout sessions with brown bag lunches served will follow the awards. Passes to attend Tribeca Innovation Week are available which include access to the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards. Visit www.tribecafilm.com/innovation for more information.

The 2014 Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Award honorees are as follows:
 
Jay Walker – Lifetime Achievement Award: Jay Walker is the founder and chairman of LabTV, an innovative new video platform designed to encourage millions of America’s best and brightest students to consider becoming medical scientists. A serial entrepreneur and business leader, Jay has founded three companies that serve more than 50 million customers each. Best known as the creator of Priceline, he is the world’s 11th most patented living inventor, named on more than 700 U.S. patents that describe business solutions across a dozen industries. Jay is also curator and chairman of TEDMED, the health and medicine edition of the famous TED conference. In addition, he chairs Patent Properties, Inc., a public company that is creating a simple and affordable new way to diffuse innovation through America’s economy.

Dick Fosbury– Lifetime Achievement Award: Dick Fosbury defied convention when he went on to win a Gold Medal at the 1968 Olympics hosted by Mexico City. The creator of the “Fosbury Flop” Dick changed the game forever. Since that time, the Fosbury Flop has become the universal technique used by elite high jumpers globally. The USA Olympic Hall of Famer continues to travel the world inspiring young athletes and corporate partners promoting the benefits of sports, fitness, and an active, healthy lifestyle.

Yancey Strickler – Christensen Prize: Yancey Strickler is co-founder and CEO of Kickstarter. Yancey served as Kickstarter's Head of Community and Head of Communications before becoming CEO. Prior to Kickstarter, Yancey was a music journalist whose writing appeared in The Village Voice, New York magazine, Pitchfork, and other publications.

Adam Braun: Adam Braun is a New York Times bestselling author and the Founder of Pencils of Promise, an award-winning organization that has built on more than 200 schools around the world. His book "The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change" debuted at #2 on the New York Times Bestseller list and explains the guiding steps for any person to discover a life of success and significance.

Yael Cohen: Yael Cohen is the founder and CEO of Fuck Cancer, a cancer education organization changing the way the world approaches the prevention and communication of cancer.

Dr. Francis Collins: Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. is the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  In that role he oversees the work of the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world, spanning the spectrum from basic to clinical research.

Constitute Project: Google Ideas worked with the Comparative Constitutions Project to build Constitute with the goal of making the world’s constitutions searchable so people can easily find and compare specific constitutional material. This ranges from the fairly general, such as “Citizenship” and “Foreign Policy,” to the very specific, such as “Suffrage and turnouts” and “Judicial Autonomy and Power.” The aim is to arm drafters with a better tool for constitution design and writing and help citizens learn more about their own constitutions, and those of countries around the world.

Cronut: Chef Dominique Ansel is one of the most feted pastry chefs in the world. As a James Beard Finalist for 2013 and 2014, Chef Ansel was also Business Insider's "Most Innovative People" in 2013 and and Crain's "40 Under 40" in 2014. His creations, from the Cronut™ -- one of Time Magazine's 25 Best Inventions of 2013 -- to the Cookie Shot and Frozen S'more have captured the imaginations and attention not only of the culinary world, but that of innovators worldwide.

JC Curleigh: President of the Levi’s® brand. Responsible for leading the strategic direction and execution of the brand globally with a focus on product creation, marketing concepts, and market solutions. He has more than 20 years of experience building and expanding consumer brands, including KEEN Footwear, Inc. and Salomon Sports North America.

Regina Dugan: Vice President of Engineering at Google named Fast Company’s “Most Creative People in Business 1000” and CNN’s “Top 10 Thinkers.” She leads the Advanced Technology and Projects group charged with breakthrough innovations in mobile computing and accelerating the development of promising technologies to market.

Mary Fisher: Mary Fisher did not wait for change; she became it. In the darkest days of the American AIDS epidemic, she showed millions a “new face of AIDS.” Through her speeches, books, painting, quilts and ethical jewelry, she’s called powerful audiences around the world to protect the powerless. She’s helped build clinics, schools, and sustainable social enterprises enabling vulnerable women to realize their dreams. Co-founder of “100 Good Deeds,” she’s now inspiring a movement to change the world as she has: one person, one deed at a time.

GoldieBlox: Founded by Debbie Sterling in 2012 after recognizing the need for more women in engineering and knowing that girls typically lose interest in math and science as early as age eight. Seizing the opportunity to inspire future innovators before this critical juncture, Sterling designed GoldieBlox to cultivate young girls' ingenuity and get them building.  GoldieBlox is a book series and construction set where girls follow and build alongside Goldie, a girl inventor.

IdeaPaint: IdeaPaint, headquartered in Boston, MA, exists for one simple reason, to fundamentally improve the way people work and work together.  IdeaPaint makes a high performance dry erase paint that transforms any surface into a boundless writable dry erase canvas that becomes a catalyst for better results; through encouraging collaboration, enhancing creativity and increasing engagement.  

Kevin Kelley: Kevin Kelley, a head football coach and athletic director at Pulaski Academy in Little Rock, Arkansas, has radically changed the thinking about "go for it" backed by statistical analysis.  Kelley has led his team to three state championships in the last 11 years by rarely ever giving up the ball on fourth down. Now known as the "the coach who never punts", Kelley has transformed conventional thinking about football strategy.

Lindon Leader:Over a thirty-year career in corporate identity Lindon has developed branding programs for FedEx, CIGNA, Avery Dennison, Hawaiian Airlines and Ryder Systems, among many others.  Lindon has earned significant recognition worldwide, testimony to the merit of his two-word design philosophy: clarity and simplicity.  His work has appeared in numerous publications and his FedEx logo was cited in the May 2003 Rolling Stone magazine twenty-fifth anniversary issue as one of the eight best American identities of the preceding twenty-five years.

Roya Mahboob: Roya Mahboob is the CEO of Afghan Citadel Software and is one of the first female IT CEOs in Afghanistan. She received the Time 100 Most Influential award in 2013, in a piece written by Sheryl Sandberg, for her work building internet classrooms for women in Afghanistan. Her model trained women to work online from home, allowing them to earn money in a practical way. She also serves on the board of Jelly, the new company from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. Her fellow board members include Al Gore, Jack Dorsey, and Bono.

Menurkey: Conceived and prototyped by New York City 10-year-old Asher Weintraub, the Menurkey™ is a menorah + turkey combination prompted by the once in a lifetime 2013 convergence of Hanukkah and Thanksgiving.  Inspiring countless imitations, a goal-doubling crowdfunding campaign, and even President Obama (who called it a ‘small miracle’), the Menurkey became the Jewish Museum’s top selling item in history, and changed the way we look at hybrid holidays.

Jon Oringer: Jon Oringer is the founder and CEO of Shutterstock, Inc. (NYSE:SSTK), the world's leading provider of commercial stock videos, photos and illustrations. As a dynamic, two-sided creative marketplace, Shutterstock currently has 40,000 contributing artists providing 30 million images to 750,000 customers around the world. The company recently surpassed 350 million paid image downloads and maintains offices in several cities around the world, including New York, Berlin, San Francisco and London.

Amanda Palmer: Provocative, irreverent, controversial and wildly creative, Amanda Palmer is a fearless singer, songwriter, playwright, blogger and an audaciously expressive pianist who simultaneously embraces – and explodes – traditional frameworks of music, theater and art.

City of Pittsburgh: Preparing young people for higher education and the workforce means building on the basics and connecting students with creative and imaginative learning experiences that help them develop modern day skills and competencies. In Pittsburgh, learning innovation efforts are spearheaded by Kids+Creativity, a collaborative network of people, projects and organizations working together to remake learning in schools, libraries, museums, afterschool programs, community centers and online.
Gregg Behr and Cathy Lewis Long will be accepting the award on behalf of Pittsburgh.

Red Bull Music Academy: When Many Ameri and Torsten Schmidt were approached in 1997 by an Austrian Beverage Company to help to create something long-lasting and meaningful in music, they had little idea, how serious those alpine folks really were. 17 years of Red Bull Music Academy later, their company Yadastar conceptualizes and executes not only more than 500 music & art events a year, but has added an almost endless video archive of original accounts of modern day's music history, an online radio station, books and moving images. Yet at the heart of it is still the annual gathering of 60 handpicked applicants, who, once meeting their counterparts from different eras, turn the host city (2014 that will be Tokyo) into a 6 week-long festival of creation, collaboration and celebration.

Sesame Workshop: Sesame Workshop is the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street, the landmark television program that reaches millions of children every day in more than 150 countries. The Workshop’s mission is to use the educational power of media to help children everywhere reach their highest potential. Delivered through a variety of platforms, Sesame Workshop develops research-based content – including television programs, books, games, mobile apps and community engagement initiatives – that supports early childhood learning, helps prepare children for school, and addresses developmental needs. The Workshop’s programs are tailored to the needs of specific regions and focus on topics that help young children and families develop critical skills for lifelong learning.  CEO and President, Melvin Ming will be accepting the award on behalf of Sesame Workshop.

Shiza Shahid: Shiza Shahid is an entrepreneur and activist, with her current role being cofounder and CEO of the Malala Fund. She has been recognized as TIME Magazine's social entrepreneur on its list of “30 Under 30,” Forbes Magazine Education “30 Under 30,” and featured in multiple publications for her social entrepreneurship work including Entrepreneur Magazine and Fast Company.

Sputnik: On October 4th, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, humankind's first artificial satellite.  This 184 lb. round ball of metal triggered a response in the United States which is now called The Sputnik Moment -- a period of several years that began a scientific, political and cultural transformation in America and was the beginning of a Space Race. David Hoffman, The Sputnik Moment’s "unofficial historian," will be accepting for himself and on behalf of the many individuals who worked on Sputnik and all human technological endeavors since. A 50 year veteran documentary filmmaker who has produced 178 television shows and series mostly for PBS, David Hoffman is currently Executive Producer of Jay Walker’s LabTV. Among Hoffman’s 5 documentary feature films is Sputnik Mania (2009) and its spinoff, the one-hour documentary The Sputnik Moment. In creating this film, Hoffman spent more than a year uncovering the profound changes that took place in America within the 18 months after the Soviets launched Sputnik. 

Warby Parker & VisionSpring: Both Warby Parker and VisionSpring have been inspired to disrupt the status quo in the fields of eyewear and vision—one from a non-profit perspective, and the other from a for-profit perspective. Neil Blumenthal, co-founder of Warby Parker, was an early hire at VisionSpring helping to pioneer innovative solutions to deliver affordable glasses in the developing world. Today Warby Parker is revolutionizing the American eyewear industry and VisionSpring has sold more than 1.6 million glasses to those living on less than $8 a day.

Wochit: Wochit is a revolution in short form video. The cloud based video creation platform enables brands and storytellers to instantly react to any story and economically scale branded, studio-quality video production. Whether it’s breaking news or a personal message to communicate, in just 10 minutes you have a ready-to-publish video for web, social and mobile. Backed by Redpoint Ventures, Cedar Fund and Greycroft Partners, Wochit is based in New York with offices in Tel Aviv.

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About the Disruptor Foundation
The Disruptor Foundation is an independent 501(C)3 non-profit private foundation co-founded in 2009 by Craig Hatkoff,  Irwin Kula and Professor Clayton Christensen, who also serves as Senior Advisor. The Foundation’s mission is to raise awareness of and encourage the advancement of disruptive innovation theory and its application in societally-critical domains.  The Foundation’s marquee event, the annual Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards, is presented in collaboration with theTribeca Film Festival and the Harvard Business School’s Professor Clayton Christensen, originator of disruptive innovation theory.  It will seek to broaden the theory and applications of disruptive as well as other forms of innovations into non-traditional domains and areas. The Foundation will organize, plan and sponsor conferences, events, seminars, awards, prizes, publications, digital and electronic resources for analysis, study, research and application using Disruptive Innovation to effect societal change. The Foundation will encourage cross-disciplinary interaction and serve as a convener of traditional and non-traditional thinkers, entrepreneurs, educators, funders and innovation activists. The Disruptor Foundation Fellows are a self-defining, self-organizing community of accomplished and promising innovators, applying transdisciplinary approaches in their work and daily lives to further the study and application of disruptive innovation. There are no requirements and no obligations other than to be part of an interesting community of creative "solutionaries" across domains.
The Disruptor Cup brings together designers, developers and community members to create simple, effective, user friendly and experience based solutions to persistent urban challenges. The first Disruptor Cup was held in New York City in April 2013, around the theme of emergency preparedness, response and long term recovery.

Tribeca Film Festival
The Tribeca Film Festival helps filmmakers reach the broadest possible audience, enabling the international film community and general public to experience the power of cinema and promote New York City as a major filmmaking center. It is well known for being a diverse international film festival that supports emerging and established directors.

Founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff in 2001 following the attacks on the World Trade Center, to spur the economic and cultural revitalization of the lower Manhattan district through an annual celebration of film, music, and culture, the Festival brings the industry and community together around storytelling.

The Tribeca Film Festival has screened more than 1,500 films from more than 80 countries since its first edition in 2002. Since inception, it has attracted an international audience of more than 4.5 million attendees and has generated an estimated $850 million in economic activity for New York City.

Press Contacts:

TFF/Tribeca Enterprises:
Tammie Rosen, VP of Communications,
(212) 941-2003  
trosen@tribecaenterprises.com

Hiltzik Strategies
Melissa Nathan
(212) 430-5059
mnathan@hstrategies.com

Hiltzik Strategies
Breanna Farquharson
(212) 776-1163
bfarquharson@hstrategies.com