Wellington Tech Startup Loomio Wins International Award

**For immediate release** 3 April 2014

Wellington Tech Startup Loomio Wins International Management Innovation Award

Loomio, the online decision-making tool built by a Wellington-based startup, was yesterday named a winner of the MIX Prize Digital Freedom Challenge, an international management innovation award run by Polly LaBarre, co-founder of Fast Company magazine.

According to LaBarre, “The beauty of Loomio is that it transcends the tradeoff between efficiency and engagement.”

“We were looking for depth, boldness, humanity, and clarity—and we found it!” said LaBarre.

Alanna Krause, co-founder of Loomio, was “delighted” at the announcement.

“It’s amazing to get international recognition from people who really understand the cutting edge of management innovation.” said Krause.

As a result of the award, Loomio will be featured in Fortune magazine and is now in the running for the Management Innovator of the Year award.

“Loomio’s approach is bigger than a software tool—it’s about fundamentally rethinking how you mobilize and organize people to productive ends,” said LaBarre.

“Unlike most conflict-based, majority-rules approaches to group decision-making, Loomio gives a truly diverse mix of perspectives and voices a meaningful role in the conversation, builds a deeply shared understanding of the issue at hand, and generally leads to higher-quality outcomes,” said LaBarre.

Loomio is being used by thousands of groups worldwide, from community organisations and startup businesses, to innovators like the Wikimedia Foundation. The Wellington City Council last year used Loomio for city-wide public consultation, and the Enspiral social enterprise network has been coordinating internal communications and business decision-making through Loomio for the past 18 months.

“Using Loomio has transformed the way Enspiral functions, from day-to-day decisions about the co-working space, right up to strategic business decisions that affect the whole network. Being able to make decisions without having to meet has radically increased the efficiency and effectiveness of engagement and participation.” said Krause.

Loomio is currently crowdfunding to produce a scalable mobile version of their tool, so far raising US$54,000 of their US$100,000 target. The crowdfunding campaign finishes on April 16th.

ENDS

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