Blink Mobile Interactive wins innovation award at the Australian Business Awards

A boutique tech company has won an innovation award at this year’s Australian Business Awards for its rapid development of mobile applications, just two weeks after winning a similar award at the NSW State iAwards.

Blink Mobile Interactive, which runs on a platform-as-a-service model, enables organisations to provide mobile interactions and response mechanisms from their existing web-based information and business systems.

Founded in 2005 by Darren Besgrove and Ben Thomas-Brigden, the NSW-based business has grown from four staff to 15 in the last 12 months. It took out the Australian Business Award for Innovation at this year’s Australian Business Awards.

The awards, now in their sixth year, are open to all private, public and non-profit sector organisations in Australia, including multinational subsidiaries and franchisors.

There are 10 business categories including innovation, recommended employer, service excellence, marketing excellence, project management and environmental sustainability.

More than 100 recipients from 928 organisations entered this year’s awards, and BlinkMobile proved to the most innovative.

The innovation award recognises products or services that introduce a new idea, method, technology, process or application of commercial significance and/or benefit to the marketplace.

Desgrove said his company’s win reinforces its commitment to research and development, while is “fundamental to everything we do”.

“The single biggest expense we have is R&D… We operate on a six-month release cycle, and in between we’re always making enhancements and features,” he says.

Blink Mobile Interactive originally began as an SMS service, developing a service known as Bounce Back SMS, which essentially acts as an SMS bulletin board for community groups, schools and clubs.

“Back in 2005, SMS was the main communications protocol… [After developing Bounce Back SMS], we realised that what people need at their fingertips, with regard to mobile content, is quite minimal so finding a way to filter and distil all that was sort of a watershed moment,” Desgrove says.

Desgrove says the mobile market is still very much associated with the consumer, but he believes this will change in the future.

“The concept of businesses and big organisations embracing mobility is really where it’s all going to head. With regard to businesses embracing mobile devices as true work tools, we don’t think we’ve even scratched the surface yet,” he says.

While Blink Mobile was recognised at this year’s awards for its innovation, PR agency Porter Novelli Melbourne won the award for recommended employer for the second consecutive year.

“We work to gain and retain an unfair share of the most committed people,” managing director Peter Kent said in a statement.

“We hire and nurture smart, passionate and creative team players who do what they say they’re going to do – what we know our clients respect above all else.”

Other award winners included Optus, Deloitte, Canon Australia, Corporate Express and coffee franchise Gloria Jean’s Coffees.