The competition was fierce, the voting turnout heavy, the judges had a tough time agreeing…but we can now proudly announce the winners of the New Polymath “Wow” candidate contest.
3 sets of winners are being announced - my publisher Wiley will reward each set with books from its wide catalog:
a) The Wow Candidate
This was decided by adding up all the nominated candidates from the reader entries. We ended up with a tie – Dan Farber of CBS and Dennis Howlett of AccmanPro got the highest number of votes. They won against formidable competition – other nominees included Marc Benioff, Bill Hambrecht, the Kleiner Perkins Cleantech team, even Leonardo Da Vinci himself. So it is quite an honor.
Said one reader about Dan:
“He took little funding, a freelance budget and rebuilt a brand (ZDNet) that was largely left for dead. It was a media bet on blogs that worked out nicely.”
And about Dennis:
“I'm fascinated by the implications of The New Polymath for individuals, and few have done more to chart the course than Dennis, in terms of the impact an individual with grit and a computer rig can have on global enterprise discussions. Not only does Dennis fit the definition of Polymath with his know-how in accounting, SMEs, big ERP, and Saas/cloud, but he also uses technical innovations to provide virtual event coverage and shrink the world from rural Spain.”
b) The best reader entry
was judged by 2 independent judges – Bob Warfield and Peter Fingar – and by me. The winner is Rein Krevald for his entry:
“The idea for this book first started taking shape in the Author’s “New Florence. New Renaissance blog several years ago. OK, so how did the blog start? The words Renaissance and Polymath can not be mentioned without invoking Leonardo da Vinci. “Renaissance man”, "prodigious polymath… Painter, sculptor, engineer, astronomer, anatomist, biologist, geologist, physicist, architect, philosopher, humanist. Genius……..referred to by some as “superhuman.” So………with all due respect to the innovators and innovations that are expertly presented to the reader by Mirchandani……..I would argue that greatest innovator of all is da Vinci himself. The book wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for good old Leonardo!”
c) Random Entry
Andrew Wheeler of Wiley used a random number generator to pick one reader entry out of all submitted. He did not have access to the names of the readers, only their sequential numbers. This winner is Aneel Bhusri of Workday.
Congratulations to the 3 sets of winners. A big thank you to all the readers who took part. And an even bigger thanks to the 3 judges and to Wiley for the prize books.
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