Canva and Bivacor inventions were named in Time’s Best Inventions of 2024 list, along with a transparent TV, goggle-free immersion, and bird-identifying binoculars.
Time releases its list of Best Inventions every year. In 2024, it includes two homegrown Australian heroes: Canva and Bivacor.
The Bivacor Australian-designed heart
Australian engineer Daniel Timms founded the biotech firm Bivacor in Queensland after his father died of heart failure. The company has since moved its headquarters to Houston, Texas, where it recently made headlines for implanting the first artificial heart.
Today, the Australian-designed magnetically levitating (maglev) heart was named one of Time’s Best Inventions of 2024.
“You won’t have to wait for another person to die to harvest their organs,” Timms told Forbes Australia in 2023. “In the US, they estimate around 130,000 patients per year could use some kind of mechanical or pumping support. There are only 4,000 transplants a year. There’s more than 100,000 people dying that could benefit from this.”
The potential market for the artificial heart is enormous, as evidenced by the company announcing it will IPO on the New York Stock Exchange in December.
“The BiVACOR costs less than $100,000 to make and sells for $200,000,” Timms says. “That’s a good profit. Times by 130,000 people [with the relevant heart conditions], that’s a crazy market [$13 billion]. That’s what gets the investors excited.”
Canva’s Magic Studio
Also making it into Time’s annual list is homegrown Australian tech juggernaut Canva which was on Thursday valued at $49 billion. Canva’s Magic Studio product was called out as one of the most impactful software releases this year.
“Canva has employed machine learning engineers for seven years (pre-AI-hype), yielding tools like Magic Switch (for converting documents into presentations) and Magic Grab (for turning a picture of, say, a vase into a purse),” Time states.
Canva COO Cliff Obrecht told Forbes Australia in May this year that Magic Studio is a part of a long-range strategy that the company is pursuing.
“We have a philosophy at Canva, of planting seeds and picking fruit. We’re not just thinking quarter-to-quarter what we’re going to launch feature by feature. We’re thinking, what’s going to create success, particularly for enterprise customers, or the masses, in two, three, years out?,” says Obrecht.
The methodology for the list included ‘soliciting nominations from Time’s editors and correspondents around the world, and through an online application process.’ The company says special attention was given to innovation in health care, AI, and green energy. “We then evaluated each contender on a number of key factors, including originality, efficacy, ambition, and impact,” Time states.
Time’s Best Inventions of 2024: Consumer electronics
- Goggle-Free Immersion, Brelyon Ultra Reality
- A transparent TV, LG Signature OLED T
- A Tri-Fold Smartphone, Huawei Mate XT Ultimate Design
- Motorizing Bicycles, Bimotal Elevate
- A Fully Motorized Tripod, Edelkrone Tripod X
- Elevating Smartphone Filmmaking, Tilta Khronos Ecosystem
- Action Camera Extraordinaire, Insta360 X4
- The Slimmest Foldable Phone, Honor Magic V3
- Everything in Ultra-High-Def, Samsung Neo QLED 8K T
- A Safer Tool for Tinkerers, iFixit FixHub Power Series Smart Smoldering Iron
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