There’s a neverending tug-of-war in the business world between sticking with what works (and has always worked) and reinventing the wheel and discovering new and better ways to get things done. If something isn’t broken, then there’s no reason to fix it, right? Except that if you never try new things, then you never learn about new processes and tools that make things easier and more efficient.

Red Hat, one of the IT industry’s leading providers of open source technology solutions — including a widely-recognized and highly successful certification program — doesn’t have an award for companies and organizations that are, for example, using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) the way that they’ve always used it.

The Red Hat Innovation Awards, on the other hand, are passed out to Red Hat customer organizations that pioneer new and exciting ways to get stuff done using Red Hat technology.

The nominating period for the 2019 Red Hat Innovation Awards kicks off this week, but there’s not much time to take action: all nominations must be received no later than Nov. 7. If your organization is daring and creative in its use of Red Hat technology solutions, then you’ve got a little more than one month to get together a nomination and submit it to Red Hat.

There are five judging criteria to bear in mind when deciding whether or not your use of Red Hat technology is sufficiently innovative to win an award:

1) Business Impact: How does your innovation directly benefit your organization?
2) Digital Transformation: What did your innovation do to transform your previous methods and results?
3) Openness: To what extent does your innovation embrace open source culture?
4) Community Impact: How does your innovation directly benefit the customers, end-users, or employees it affects?
5) Coolness: Is your innovation unique and creative?

From among all nominees, a panel of industry-expert judges will select five winners and five honorable mentions to receive public recognition. The 2019 Red Hat Innovator of the Year will be selected by everyone in the Red Hat community from among the five winners chosen by judges. There’s a fistful of prizes for the winners, including complimentary Red Hat Summit passes and hotel accommodations.

Winners will be notified in January, and publicly announced May 6. Final award recognition will take place during Red Hat Summit, May 7-9 in Boston. Additional information about the contest is available online.

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