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Nutter Client 99Degrees Custom Named a Grand Prize Winner of MIT IDE’s Inclusive Innovation Competition
Print PDFNutter congratulates its client 99Degrees Custom on being selected as a grand prize winner of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management Initiative on the Digital Economy’s (IDE) first annual Inclusive Innovation Competition. 99Degrees Custom was awarded $125K as the grand prize winner in the Humans + Machines category. The winners were announced at an awards ceremony presented in collaboration with MIT Solve and HUBweek. 99Degrees Custom is an apparel manufacturer of sewn and bonded sports and activewear that has engineered a partially automated production line to successfully compete with lower-wage overseas manufacturers – even while it pays its trained employees living wages and benefits. Brenna Schneider, founder of 99Degrees Custom, was featured in an article in The Boston Globe about the awards, “MIT awards focus on tech that helps low, middle-income workers.”
Nutter’s Emerging Companies Group provides early stage companies the strategic legal counsel, contacts, and expertise that help clear the path to success. The firm’s business lawyers advise on a wide range of issues, including licensing, distribution, e-business, venture capital, and strategic partnering.
The MIT IDE Inclusive Innovation Competition (IIC) recognizes and celebrates organizations that are inventing a more inclusive, productive, and sustainable future for all by focusing on the use of technology to improve economic opportunity for base- and middle-level income earners. Awarding one million dollars in prizes, the IIC supports solutions that enable working people earning middle- and base-level incomes to share more equally in the prosperity created by digital technology. A total of 243 applications from around the world were reviewed by a panel of prestigious judges gathered together for the Inclusive Innovation Competition, developed by the MIT IDE in collaboration with MIT Solve. The applicants covered a wide range of business fields, including coding bootcamps, health care innovators, collaborative robotics, farmers innovating in the developing world, and firms using artificial intelligence to empower lower-skilled workers.
