Arkansas Business on Monday announced six nominees for the new Innovation Pacesetter category at the 35th annual Arkansas Business of the Year ceremony on March 8.

The category honors startups or existing companies that are remaking an old industry or charting an entirely new course to create a new market.

The finalists are:

• AcreTrader of Fayetteville, a farmland investment company
• Teslar Software of Springdale, a fintech company
• AngelEye Health of Little Rock, a health care technology company
• Bond.ai of Little Rock, a fintech company
• Ozark Integrated Circuits Inc. of Fayetteville, an electronics company
• Ox of Bentonville, a supply chain technology company

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The finalists in this and other categories were selected by an outside panel of judges and will be celebrated at an awards ceremony, presented by The Hatcher Agency and UnitedHealthcare, from 7-9 p.m. March 8, at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock. Arkansas Business announced finalists in other categories on Nov. 28.

Companies in the Innovation Pacesetter category must have been in business for at least three years and have revenue, user and/or investment traction.

And they must have demonstrated incremental innovation, enabling small but important improvements or extensions to existing products, services or processes; breakthrough innovation, using a new technology to create new product, service or process; or disruptive innovation, resulting in an entirely new product, service or process to address the unmet needs in the market or organization.

The March 8 ceremony will also honor Thomas F. “Mack” McLarty, chairman of The McLarty Companies and onetime White House chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, who will receive the annual Legacy of Leadership Award.

Past recipients of the Legacy of Leadership award include longtime Little Rock businessman and community leader Sherman Tate, billionaire businesswoman and philanthropist Johnelle Hunt, banker and restaurant franchise owner Wallace Fowler, and banker and former Simmons First National Corp. CEO J. Thomas “Tommy” May.