What makes American business the best in the world is its willingness to innovate to the point of reinvention. When our entrepreneurs see an opportunity, they seize it. When they see a problem, they solve it. When they see a new market, they enter it.

We at Ingram’s Magazine—along with our partners UMB Bank, Deloitte & Touche, KMBZ and Frontier Airlines—are pleased to honor those companies that have out-thought and out-hustled their competition.

Several of this year’s Future of Business winners created themselves to deal with pressing national problems. The most dramatic of the self-creations was Sceptor Industries, which was formed in 2001 to contain the anthrax scare. Netchemia was started to streamline K-12 reporting requirements, intensified by the No Child Left Behind legislation of that same year.

Others have re-created themselves. UBC Late Stage Group fully reoriented itself six years ago to take advantage of its increasing expertise in late-stage drug development. Two years ago, Houlihan’s fully reinvented itself when the market told the company that its old formula no longer worked. Two years ago as well, Everest Connections climbed out from under the financial collapse of its principal investor and has kept on climbing.

Even those firms in mature industries—Bernstein-Rein Advertising, Hoefer Wysocki Architects, and Associated Wholesale Grocers—have dazzled with their innovations. Congrats to them all!

2005 Future of Business Award Winners

A Special Thanks to our Judges