Innovator Award Catches Morales With Pants Up

A lot of good lines at the Business Journal’s inaugural Innovator of the Year Awards last week, including one that helped sum up how the event reaches beyond the buzzword for a comprehensive look at one of Orange County’s most valuable and broad-based assets—businesses of all sorts that turn fresh thinking into new products, processes or practices (see news item, page 7). The lesson was wrapped in humor when Francisco Morales, president of Irvine-based specialty apparel maker 5.11 Tactical, told his colleagues that he hadn’t prepared an acceptance speech. “I’m not going to win,” he told the crew at the table in the Hotel Irvine ballroom. “We make pants.” Morales was one of six winners because 5.11 does a lot more than make pants as it engages in R&D, sourcing and design aimed at coming up with new ways to give first responders the gear they need to get the job done and enthusiasts the ability to go to the hard core of their hobbies … Keynoter and honoree William Wang of Vizio got funny in recalling a meeting he had as a young engineer who went over the heads of several superiors back in the 1990s to pitch the chairman of his Taiwan-based employer on the idea of supplementing a mainstay account with IBM by developing a product for a startup called Gateway. The conversation was in Chinese, and the boss brushed Wang off, telling him that Gateway was “a small potato.” Was Wang surprised? Only that the big boss was familiar with the slang of “small potato” … Wang went on to hook up with Gateway on his own, which brought him his first taste of success as an innovator (Look for Wang’s story and coverage of the other honorees in next week’s issue of the Business Journal) … Plenty of other evidence in this issue that innovation is a constant in OC. Check Chris Casacchia’s page 1 piece for insights on why Google Fiber has put Irvine in a league with much larger cities around the nation … Or the front-page story by Kate Schwartz on OC’s place in the race to develop an autonomous vehicle … The OC chapter of the Girl Scouts of America can claim an innovator of its own in Liza Villanueva, one of 10 Gold Award winners also named National Young Women of Distinction. Villanueva established iDREAM Express, a nonprofit organization that has created mobile learning and care centers to serve poverty-stricken areas of the Philippines. The Girl Scouts and the Kappa Delta Foundation have each put up $50,000 for scholarships to be shared by Villanueva and her fellow honorees. Check page 1 for Kim Haman’s report on some past Gold Award winners who make a difference in OC’s community of business and the Girl Scouts … The Hoag Hospital Foundation wants to foster various innovations on healthcare and how it gets delivered to the community, and it’s not shying away from the cost of the challenge. The Insider heard at press time that it has fixed a firm fundraising goal for its Hoag Promise campaign at $627 million … Kudos to one-time Pimco CEO Bill Thompson and his wife, Nancy, who are backers of the Hoag Promise campaign and founders of the Center for Autism & Neurodevelopmental Disorders, which recently raised $512,000 at its inaugural Hope & Help Gala at the Resort at Pelican Hill. Danielle Allison and Anne Warmington hosted the evening program, which included honors for Damon Shelly of the Shelly Automotive Group.