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[adsense:120x240:1:1]The Industrial Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) are dedicated to fostering business and public understanding of the importance of industrial design excellence to the quality of life and the economy. Winning the IDEA is a distinction like no other that brands your design as the very best in the business.

Businessweek has a wonderful slideshow of the 108 IDEA winners in categories such as EcoDesign, Consumer Products and Furniture.

The Gold Winner for Consumer Products category included the SignalOneSafety Vocal Smoke Detector. This innovative product uses a parent's recorded voice to wake children in case of a fire and provide them with evacuation instructions. The VSD is effective in waking nearly twice as many sleeping children as traditional smoke alarms.

Another gold winner was a combination washer and dryer with a tilting drum to make the machine accessible to mobility limited consumers.

Winners in the EcoDesing category included Silver winner The COCOON. This is an environmentally friendly casket. It is manufactured by hand using fast-growing renewable primary resources that bio-degrade within 10-15 years. It features a new, timeless shape... The casket is also lighter than most traditional designs, rendering it easier to carry and lower into the ground.

This is a wonderful reference for inspiration on the innovations available today, so make sure to go and take a look.