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

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

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.

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 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

Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson

I really enjoyed this engaging mind map, delightfully presented.

(More from Steven Johnson from TEDGlobal 2010 here: http://bit.ly/bs8u99 )

Engineering as a Driving Force Behind the Design Thinking Movement

Great article by Bob Sutton at Work Matters - (Good Boss Bad Boss and The No Asshole Rule) - on Design Thinking, and reminding us (if it were needed), that David Kelley is an engineer.

http://bit.ly/9QmUqb

Liquid networks.

Steven Johnson on liquid networks - from London's coffee houses to Darwin's long, slow hunch to today's high velocity web - at TEDGlobal Oxford July 2010.

I particularly like the neonatal incubator made essentially from Toyota Landcruiser parts, as sustainable technology for emerging markets.

At 18 minutes long you might want to get yourself a coffee to feel at home.

Cumulative evolution and why nobody knows how to make a pencil.

Inspiring thoughts from Matt Ridley at TEDGlobal 2010 Oxford earlier this month, showing how human progress is driven by the meeting and mating of ideas and why nobody knows how to make a pencil.

Design for Growth

As organisations watch their traditional markets wilt, the need to build new revenue streams becomes more urgent. Perhaps not suprisingly, sticking with good management practices - even in tough times, is helping high performing co's to stand out.

Inside Microsoft's Envisioning Lab, Herman Miller's Convia system makes the building hardware as modular as the software display. Photograph by Lara Swimmer

Herman Miller's continued investment in innovation to identify and access new markets, is a great example of backing your team and its core competences to look for new problems that need great solutions. Click the link to strategy+business to find out what they are doing.  http://bit.ly/a33qAP

McLaren Technology Centre

Foster's fine five year old factory - a fitting face for the future of manufacturing in the UK.

It's even better up close...

Stick and Carrot

At the Road to Zero Carbon seminar last week, there was much debate about why ‘green homes’ are not valued more highly. “They don’t get it” was a phrase I heard more than once from the floor. “They” of course, are the people who want to buy a home and the banks that lend them the money to do so.

So it’s good to see the Zero Carbon Hub championing “A Marketing Strategy for New Homes” http://bit.ly/9T1EzS

“Develop a national new homes marketing campaign to stimulate customer demand for low and zero carbon homes and move them from the ‘exemplar’ to the ‘mainstream’”.

However, the need to cut through the ‘green wash’ and provide clear information on performance, cost in use and durability must not be lost in some sort of manifesto. People do ‘get’ good design and lenders value it appropriately.

“The report also recommends a change of language in how the industry communicates low and zero carbon homes.  Consumers are switched off by zero carbon homes but switched on by homes that are built to better performance standards and are therefore cheaper to run.”

The challenge for the industry is to continue to innovate and deliver that performance in a consistent, reliable and affordable way. But we need creative lenders too (a worrying concept on recent form). Energy Performance Certificates (EPC) are a positive indicator of value. Might lenders place greater emphasis on EPC’s when considering the loan to value ratio?

From a marketing perspective, strong brands will no doubt win. It will be interesting to see whether the more brand savvy, customer focussed lenders - Virgin Money, TESCO Bank, et al, take up the challenge. And how they connect with their potential supply chain, the volume house builders. And where are the good old Mutual Building Societies and Cooperative Societies in all this?

Great design is collaborative and the challenges we face need innovative solutions.

Particularly while the politicos play ‘wiff waff’ with science.

From fundi to jugaad: Indian innovation

Working in Kenya last year, I became aware of the significant role of the fundi in African engineering. Rather like Scotty on the Enterprise, the fundi's role is to improvise and to squeeze performance from materials or mechanical processes whose original function may be long past, yet with imagination, skill and dexterity can be modified for current needs.

A Swahili word, it is also used in South Africa to mean an expert, umfindisi in Nguni and meaning a teacher.

So I was interested to read in Business Week http://bit.ly/6qEw1M of an Indian concept of inexpensive invention that is finding favour in American boardrooms. Navi Radjou from Cambridge University's Centre for India & Global Business, uses a Hindi slang word, jugaad (pronounced "joo-gaardh"), to describe "an improvisational style of innovation that's driven by scarce resources and attention to a customer's immediate needs, not their lifestyle wants."

Held up as a new management fad that resonates with our times, jugaad nevertheless has potential pitfalls if quality and durability are sacrificed in pursuit of a quick fix - particularly in the context of the built environment. The process of innovation need not be complex, but for real value to be added it must generate products that are robust and enduring to be truly sustainable.

"More speed Scotty", but less haste...

More good news for OSM

Following the (leaked?) news of Laing O'Rourke's significant investment in its off-site manufacturing (OSM) capability http://bit.ly/6zbV1p to Building earlier this month, comes encouraging news from Jenny Davey in the Sunday Times http://bit.ly/bVKl7C that Persimmon is dusting off its own factory at Space4.

Mike Farley, CEO at Persimmon claims "Higher energy standards and the ability to turn the construction tap on and off at a faster rate mean the pendulum has now swung firmly in its (Space4) direction." Hopeful signs that the tap is being turned on.

Evolving legislation - the government stick to deliver zero carbon homes by 2016 - makes it increasingly difficult to cost effectively build high performing homes through conventional means. The challenge remains for Persimmon and its rivals, Barratt and Taylor Wimpey, to better inform their customers of the cost-in-use benefits of owning a smarter home.

Perhaps the market can provide the carrot that the government seems incapable of doing.

The Future of Work

Richard Donkin's The Future of Work (Palgrave Macmillan), is a timely sequel to Blood Sweat and Tears: The Evolution of Work. The rapid rate of change in technologies, living patterns and social attitudes has the potential to transform the way we work, and therefore the nature of the workplace.

"The history of the way we live and work is more evolutionary than revolutionary in nature, but there have been discernible watersheds and milestones in the past. The one we are experiencing today is multifaceted, drawing influences from a series of trends that cumulatively add up to shift in attitudes, straining to find a more comfortable environment."

The final chapter pulls together the implications for a broader society and argues "for people in work to have more discretion and latitude to do their work as they know it should be done." The key imperatives for employers and policymakers that Donkin proposes as an agenda for a better society, are positive, pragmatic and focused on performance.

A must read for all who are interested in the evolving relationship between people, processes and high performing teams.

Innovation in Tough Times

Most companies identify innovation as a strategic priority, but many struggle to execute because of the organisational barriers and outdated paradigms that exist.

In tough times it can seem even harder, with the focus on cutting cost just to survive. But innovation and efficiency are not mutually exclusive - thinking creatively in tough times can control costs.

We set up this design led consultancy in February 2009 to promote innovation in the built environment. Nearly a year on, I’m pleased to say that we seem to have found an appetite among developers, architects and builders for better ways to deliver smarter buildings.

We looked away from our historic market and had a lot of fun working in Kenya last year, supporting a start up off-site manufacturing (OSM) business and developing a building system to supply East Africa. This experience has led to further work developing OSM for emerging markets.

It’s also been encouraging to see interest from closer to home, with UK developers keen to distinguish their product from the competition and deliver it more quickly into the market, as more favourable economic conditions prevail.

Looking forward, design problems in 2010 will continue to become more complex as the social, economic and environmental conditions converge to demand higher performing buildings. We will continue to champion off-site manufacturing and on-site assembly, so that more people may enjoy the benefits of sustainable living.

Incidentally, it was great to see Nick Whitehouse recognised in the New Years Honours List for services to the building industry - well deserved Nick, congratulations!

My good mate Ash has been badgering me to share some of this, so now we are...

Key words for 2010

Reflecting on opportunities for the year ahead, certain key words seem relevant:

• resourcefulness
• collaboration
• durability
• scarcity
  
• change

...and brevity.