An Orem maker of handheld X-ray dental machines that got featured on two popular TV series, "House" and "CSI New York," and an American Fork Internet TV provider that is backed by the likes of Walt Disney Co. and Microsoft were among six companies honored for their innovation and philanthropic work on Thursday.

Even as the recession deepens, Shauna Theobald, chairwoman of the Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum's board, said she saw opportunities for more entrepreneurial ventures to be created. "The downturn in the current economy can actually help strengthen new ventures. First, it eliminates some of their competitors. Second, for a company to survive in a down economy, it must become lean and mean and provide significant value to its customers."

Theobald said the 2008 UVEF award winners each "demonstrate the power of ideas coupled with sound management."

John Edwards, president and chief executive of Move Networks of American Fork, received the UVEF's 2008 Entrepreneur of the Year for his work in pioneering technology that allows high-definition resolution video broadcasts on the Internet.

Founded in 2006, the 110-worker company's innovations won $54 million in funding from Steamboat Ventures, an investment arm of Walt Disney Co., Microsoft, Comcast and Cisco.

"We broadcast live and on-demand video on the Internet. Our technology core is an invention that allows us to broadcast in higher resolution without stalling or interruptions, which leads to view times of over 60 minutes, and therefore larger monetization opportunities for broadcasters," Edwards said. "In other words, if people watch longer, more ads can be sold."

"We have roughly the same amount of traffic as YouTube in the U.S.," he said. "We do about 55 percent of prime time programming on our network and that includes major U.S. broadcasters including ABC, Fox, ESPN and Discovery."

The Most Innovative Product award went to Aribex Inc. in Orem. Founded in 2004 by Clark Turner, the 35-worker company began with a humanitarian focus -- developing a battery-powered handheld dental X-ray machine for dentists who were serving missions overseas. The device improves the ability to do root canals and other procedures like implants in third world countries, he said.

The device caught the public eye after it was used as a prop on "CSI New York" and "House," Turner said. "On 'CSI,' one of the actors used it to X-ray a dead body in a morgue. After that, whenever we go to a trade show, many people will come to our booth and say they saw the machine on the show."

The company expects its annual sales to jump to $6 million this year from $3.5 million a year ago after it received FDA approval in June for its handheld device.

Utah Valley's Best Kept Secret award went to Reflect Scientific of Orem.

Founded in 1993 in Mountain View, Calif., the green technology company relocated to Orem in 2006 to "escape California's high business costs," said company CEO Kim Boyce. Reflect Scientific, which has 41 workers companywide including 10 in Utah, makes ultra low temperature freezers using its patented cryogenics technology for pharmaceuticals and biotech firms.

"I didn't vote for Obama, but I like what he is proposing to do for the clean-tech industry. It'll be a great direction for the country if we can stop relying on foreign oil," Boyce said. "There are 350,000 refrigerated trucks on the roads today. Each one uses a diesel engine to cool the trailers. Replacing these engines with clean technology will remove millions of tons of pollutants from the environment."

The Greatest Contribution to Entrepreneurs award went to Paul Allen, founder of Provo Labs, an early stage Web business incubator. Paul has been an entrepreneur since 1990 when he co-founded Infobases, a publisher of religious and educational CD ROMs. Infobases made the Inc. 500 in 1996.

Allen, co-founder of Ancestry.com and MyFamily.com, said in a statement Thursday that he believes the answer to the economic crisis lies in more entrepreneurship, not more government intervention.

"The government talks about bailing out industry after industry-- but it's not bailing out, it's piling on -- more and more debt," he said. "The free market must allow failure to occur. We can't privatize all business earnings and socialize all losses. We learn the most from our failures, and a Darwinian process ends up creating fit companies that are efficient and competitive in a global economy.

"I pledge my personal efforts to encourage, teach, train and inspire future entrepreneurs who may enable us to reinvent things like health care, education, and during this upcoming Great Recession, perhaps create new agricultural, energy, and manufacturing enterprises that we need in order to become a nation of production, and not just a nation of consumption and debt," he said.

He said he saw new entrepreneurial opportunities in areas including robotics, cloud computing, smart mobile phones with powerful CPUs, solar power and alternative energy as well as nanotechnology.

Other winners include: Todd Manwaring, founder and managing director of the BYU Center for Economic Self-Reliance, who received the Community Service award.

Manwaring, a Marriott School faculty member, teaches MBA and MPA courses on social entrepreneurship and nonprofit resource development. He worked previously in the computer industry in Salt Lake City, Boston and Seattle.

He is also an ex officio advisory board member of the George W. Romney Institute of Public Management at BYU, and has direct economic development and international research experience in Kenya, Bangladesh, Bolivia, El Salvador, Ghana, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and the Philippines.

Warner Woodworth, a social entrepreneur and popular professor of organizational behavior at the Marriott School, received the Ronald K. King Social Entrepreneur of the Year award.

In 2003, he helped design and generate the first $3 million to establish BYU's Center for Economic Self-Reliance, which institutionalized many of his projects, research publications and conferences. He is also a consultant to major governments, corporations, non-governmental organizations and trade unions.

A serial entrepreneur, Woodworth has founded or served on the boards of non-governmental organizations, 22 of which operate globally. Locally, Woodworth and others have been operating a small microfinance project in Utah Valley -- MicroBusiness Mentors -- which recruits and gives $500 startup loans and pro bono consulting to Latinos.

Related

• 20 Utah County entrepreneurs honored by the Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum
• Am. Fork enticing company to expand in city