LifeStraw Wins Saatchi & Saatchi Award for World Changing Ideas

Saatchi & Saatchi has just announced the winner of its Award for World-Changing Ideas, the international competition held every two years to recognize and publicize outstanding innovations. It is the LifeStraw, a portable personal water-purification tool for use in the developing world (you may recall it from the Cooper-Hewitt Museum‘s recent “Design for the Other 90%” exhibition). The product’s developers, the Vestergaard Frandsen Group, receive a prize valued at $100,000 ($50,000 cash and $50,000 worth of Saatchi & Saatchi consulting). Judges for the award included Edward de Bono, Peter Gabriel, Malcolm McLaren, and Philippe Starck.

We’re just back from the gala awards ceremony at Saatchi & Saatchi’s Soho headquarters (we would have posted this sooner but were unable to tear ourselves away from the One Laptop Per Child Project XO laptops on display, not to mention the giant Frank Stella works in the lobby!), so look for our photos and interviews with the finalists tomorrow.

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