Transformative Technologies 2011: Elite Eight voting, what went right and wrong?

Elite Eight (round four) voting finished on Friday in the Transformative Technologies 2011 tournament. Once again, favorites did not fare well, with three falling –  including a #1 regional seed (Gevo) and a regional #2 seed (LS9) .

What went right and wrong?

1. Nearer to commercialization. As with last week, the companies that were on the faster commercialization tracks, won – the huge exception being Terrabon over Gevo.

2. With a little help from my friends. In the voting, we noted that a lot of supporting ballots came in from partners – especially marketing, investment and research partners.

3. Big surge in last-day, first time voters. We noted a lot of ballots coming in from the field on the final day from people who had not previously participated in the balloting, and that changed the voting trend in at least two contests.

4. Are those underdogs really underdogs? Five companies recorded upsets in the round of 32, and four of the five steamrolled to victory in the Sweet Sixteen, and three continued through in the Elite Eight –  #5 International seed Novozymes, #6 Central seed Terrabon, #7 East seed Joule Unlimited. What do they have in common? Passionate fan bases for their differentiated technologies – Terrabon’s MixAlco, Joule’s SolarConverter, and Novozymes’ enzyme technologies. OriginOil, which has a passionate fan base for its suite of algal technologies, may have paid the price for being up against another company working on an algal platform, in Solazyme.

5. Ground game. A good “get out the vote” effort helps – companies like Solazyme, Terrabon and OriginOil went to lengths to remind their supporters among Digest subscribers to fill out their ballots, and though someone had to lose out in Solazyme vs OriginOil, this was a key to advancing.

Voting is open to all Biofuels Digest subscribers. Voting links are in the Biofuels Digest daily newsletter. To subscribe (free), visit here.

Transformative Technologies is a subscriber-voted, “knock-out” tournament which measures the impact of the competitor’s technologies on the bioenergy landscape. More than 400 pages of data on all the competitors (and more) is available here – also, individual match-ups include links to the most recent profiles submitted by companies for the 2011-12 50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy, which is coming up for voting in the 4th quarter of 2011.

The complete tournament bracket, with the most up to date scoring, is available for download here.