The Technology Strategy Board recently launched a new Grant for Research and Development programme designed specifically for individual small to medium enterprises.
Aimed at SME's engaged in technology-based R&D projects, three types of grant are available for proof of market projects, proof of concept and development of prototype - with funding levels ranging from £25k - £250k.
Grant for R&D is a successor to funding programmes previously available from Regional Development Agencies, however some of the qualification criteria are different and businesses need to ensure that applications are specifically aimed at the new scheme.
To apply see here:
http://www.innovateuk.org/deliveringinnovation/grant-for-research-and-development.ashx
To see how ApplyInnovation might help your business see here:
http://www.applyinnovation.com
Apply provides expert advice on business, project and product development to clients engaged with capital projects.
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Wednesday 27 April 2011
Sunday 3 April 2011
Apply News: Sarah McCarthy appointed to the Parliamentary Liaison Team of The Heritage Alliance
In February, Apply's Sarah McCarthy was appointed to the Parliamentary Liaison Team of The Heritage Alliance, with specific focus on archaeology.
The Heritage Alliance is the biggest collaborative alliance of heritage interests in the UK and was set up to promote the central role of the non-Government movement in the heritage sector. The Heritage Alliance has 87 members; national and major regional organisations including The National Trust, the Council for British Archaeology (CBA), the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) and The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) as well as many smaller and more specialised heritage groups.
Sarah's role is concerned with co-ordinating the Alliance members' activities in relation to the Localism Bill and the forthcoming National Planning Policy Framework consultation, and communicating their ideas and concerns to parliament and other opinion formers.
Dr Sarah McCarthy specialises in heritage tourism and conservation planning, as well as advising clients in visitor management, interpretive planning and delivery.
The Heritage Alliance is the biggest collaborative alliance of heritage interests in the UK and was set up to promote the central role of the non-Government movement in the heritage sector. The Heritage Alliance has 87 members; national and major regional organisations including The National Trust, the Council for British Archaeology (CBA), the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) and The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) as well as many smaller and more specialised heritage groups.
Sarah's role is concerned with co-ordinating the Alliance members' activities in relation to the Localism Bill and the forthcoming National Planning Policy Framework consultation, and communicating their ideas and concerns to parliament and other opinion formers.
Dr Sarah McCarthy specialises in heritage tourism and conservation planning, as well as advising clients in visitor management, interpretive planning and delivery.
Saturday 12 February 2011
Nokia CEO Stephen Elop’s “burning platform” memo to staff - February 2011, days before he announced the collaboration with Microsoft as the company’s strategy for recovery.
Hello there,
There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform's edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.
As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a "burning platform," and he needed to make a choice.
He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times - his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a "burning platform" caused a radical change in his behaviour.
We too, are standing on a "burning platform," and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.
Over the past few months, I've shared with you what I've heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I'm going to share what I've learned and what I have come to believe.
I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform.
And, we have more than one explosion - we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us.
For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem.
In 2008, Apple's market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.
And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry's innovation to its core.
Let's not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally - taking share from us in emerging markets.
While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind.
The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.
We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.
At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead.
At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, "the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation." They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us.
And the truly perplexing aspect is that we're not even fighting with the right weapons. We are still too often trying to approach each price range on a device-to-device basis.
The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren't taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we're going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.
This is one of the decisions we need to make. In the meantime, we've lost market share, we've lost mind share and we've lost time.
On Tuesday, Standard & Poor's informed that they will put our A long term and A-1 short term ratings on negative credit watch. This is a similar rating action to the one that Moody's took last week. Basically it means that during the next few weeks they will make an analysis of Nokia, and decide on a possible credit rating downgrade. Why are these credit agencies contemplating these changes? Because they are concerned about our competitiveness.
Consumer preference for Nokia declined worldwide. In the UK, our brand preference has slipped to 20 percent, which is 8 percent lower than last year. That means only 1 out of 5 people in the UK prefer Nokia to other brands. It's also down in the other markets, which are traditionally our strongholds: Russia, Germany, Indonesia, UAE, and on and on and on.
How did we get to this point? Why did we fall behind when the world around us evolved?
This is what I have been trying to understand. I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven't been delivering innovation fast enough. We're not collaborating internally.
Nokia, our platform is burning.
We are working on a path forward -- a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future.
The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, we have a great opportunity to do the same.
Stephen.
There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform's edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.
As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a "burning platform," and he needed to make a choice.
He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times - his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a "burning platform" caused a radical change in his behaviour.
We too, are standing on a "burning platform," and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.
Over the past few months, I've shared with you what I've heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I'm going to share what I've learned and what I have come to believe.
I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform.
And, we have more than one explosion - we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us.
For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem.
In 2008, Apple's market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.
And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry's innovation to its core.
Let's not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally - taking share from us in emerging markets.
While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind.
The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.
We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.
At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead.
At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, "the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation." They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us.
And the truly perplexing aspect is that we're not even fighting with the right weapons. We are still too often trying to approach each price range on a device-to-device basis.
The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren't taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we're going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.
This is one of the decisions we need to make. In the meantime, we've lost market share, we've lost mind share and we've lost time.
On Tuesday, Standard & Poor's informed that they will put our A long term and A-1 short term ratings on negative credit watch. This is a similar rating action to the one that Moody's took last week. Basically it means that during the next few weeks they will make an analysis of Nokia, and decide on a possible credit rating downgrade. Why are these credit agencies contemplating these changes? Because they are concerned about our competitiveness.
Consumer preference for Nokia declined worldwide. In the UK, our brand preference has slipped to 20 percent, which is 8 percent lower than last year. That means only 1 out of 5 people in the UK prefer Nokia to other brands. It's also down in the other markets, which are traditionally our strongholds: Russia, Germany, Indonesia, UAE, and on and on and on.
How did we get to this point? Why did we fall behind when the world around us evolved?
This is what I have been trying to understand. I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven't been delivering innovation fast enough. We're not collaborating internally.
Nokia, our platform is burning.
We are working on a path forward -- a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future.
The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, we have a great opportunity to do the same.
Stephen.
Thursday 30 December 2010
Funding for innovation available now...
News arrives from the Technology Strategy Board that funding for feasibility studies is available in four innovation areas.
"Could your company benefit from bringing an idea closer to market? Four new competitions, with £6.4m of funding, are dedicated to speeding up the development of innovative technologies. The four separate competitions are in the areas of:
- Digital services
- Innovation in Space
- Responsible development of nanoscale technologies
- Technology inspired innovation.
But interested companies will need to act quickly. The competitions open on 10th January 2011 and close on 10th February 2011."
Click here to find out more: innovateuk.org/competitions.ashx
Contact us here for help and advice on applying innovation in your company: applyinnovation.com
Monday 25 October 2010
Government pledges to put Britain back at the top table for innovation.
The Prime Minister today announced plans for greater collaboration between universities and business.
Speaking at the CBI conference, David Cameron promised a 'relentless' push for growth with government investment of more than £200m over the next four years in technology and innovation centres.
Announcing what he claimed to be the "first ever national infrastructure plan", the prime minister said that the UK has sometimes been "complacent about our competitive advantage" and said the innovation centres would help new companies break into existing markets.
Outlining plans to create a "new economic dynamism", the prime minister listed his three point plan:
"First, using all available policy levers to create the right framework for enterprise and business investment.
"Second, using our resources to get behind those industries where Britain enjoys competitive advantages.
"Third, using our power and muscle to make it easier for new companies and innovations to flourish."
Prime Minister's CBI speech in full: http://bit.ly/cOhAfz
Speaking at the CBI conference, David Cameron promised a 'relentless' push for growth with government investment of more than £200m over the next four years in technology and innovation centres.
Announcing what he claimed to be the "first ever national infrastructure plan", the prime minister said that the UK has sometimes been "complacent about our competitive advantage" and said the innovation centres would help new companies break into existing markets.
Outlining plans to create a "new economic dynamism", the prime minister listed his three point plan:
"First, using all available policy levers to create the right framework for enterprise and business investment.
"Second, using our resources to get behind those industries where Britain enjoys competitive advantages.
"Third, using our power and muscle to make it easier for new companies and innovations to flourish."
Prime Minister's CBI speech in full: http://bit.ly/cOhAfz
Monday 18 October 2010
Innovation Future Zone at ecobuild 2011
The Technology Strategy Board, Modern Built Environment KTN and EPSRC are joining forces to deliver the Innovation Future Zone at ecobuild2011 from 1-3 March 2011. The Innovation Future Zone will demonstrate exemplars of leading-edge innovation as a prominent part of the UK’s leading built environment exhibition.
If your organisation has a suitable innovation and you have a prototype or demonstrator piece which will fit on to a 40cm by 40cm plinth you are invited to submit an entry to the competition.
All competition entries will be judged by an expert panel consisting of zone partners and other independent industry experts with the winning submissions being notified in January 2011.
Leading up to ecobuild details of the winning entries will be displayed on partner websites to allow visitors to vote for the innovation that they think makes the biggest overall contribution and potential business impact for industry. Visitors to the zone during Ecobuild will also be able to cast their votes leading to the overall winning innovation being announced on the final day of the exhibition.
Ecobuild 2010
In 2010 the Innovation Future Zone demonstrated 22 new or near to market technologies with visitors to the zone invited to vote for their favourite innovation. Pavegen systems won the competition with their innovative energy harvesting floor slab.The 2011 Competition
The partners are now inviting competition entries for new or near to market technologies relevant to the priority areas of energy efficiency, refurbishment, climate change adaptation and process efficiency to participate in the zone.If your organisation has a suitable innovation and you have a prototype or demonstrator piece which will fit on to a 40cm by 40cm plinth you are invited to submit an entry to the competition.
All competition entries will be judged by an expert panel consisting of zone partners and other independent industry experts with the winning submissions being notified in January 2011.
Leading up to ecobuild details of the winning entries will be displayed on partner websites to allow visitors to vote for the innovation that they think makes the biggest overall contribution and potential business impact for industry. Visitors to the zone during Ecobuild will also be able to cast their votes leading to the overall winning innovation being announced on the final day of the exhibition.
Enter the Competition
To enter your innovation into the competition https://ktn.innovateuk.org/web/innovation-future-zone/ifz-at-ecobuild-2011 by Friday 10th December 2010Friday 8 October 2010
Innovate 10: Connect for Growth
Led by the Technology Strategy Board, Innovate 10 takes place next week at the Business Design Centre in Islington. With a keynote address from Minister for Universities and Science David Willetts, it will be interesting to gauge the mood among innovators faced with significant challenges to research funding.
However, the Technology Strategy Board's online presence _connect https://ktn.innovateuk.org/web/guest/home has details of upcoming competitions for innovative project funding.
Worryingly, not many seem to date beyond the Comprehensive Spending Review scheduled for 20th October!
With 1800 attendees already registered for the event, why not add your support to the drive for innovation in UK.
Innovate 10
12 October 2010
Business Design Centre
London N1 0QH
www.innovate10.co.uk
However, the Technology Strategy Board's online presence _connect https://ktn.innovateuk.org/web/guest/home has details of upcoming competitions for innovative project funding.
Worryingly, not many seem to date beyond the Comprehensive Spending Review scheduled for 20th October!
With 1800 attendees already registered for the event, why not add your support to the drive for innovation in UK.
Innovate 10
12 October 2010
Business Design Centre
London N1 0QH
www.innovate10.co.uk
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