Thursday, March 11, 2010 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
New Business Models
| Tags: financial,
research,
recession,
strategy,
EIU,
New Business Models,
Economist,
Board,
M%A
Our research shows that most companies need to review, and possibly renew, their business models.
Here are some suggestions from our own experts on the areas that you might wish to table:
Thursday, March 11, 2010 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
New Business Models
| Tags: economist,
Microsoft,
Google,
strategy,
Stephen Weatherseed,
Will Oxley,
Wendy Hart,
Dominic Preston,
EIU,
New Business Model
Read here what our Grant Thornton experts think about the weaknesses of business models used by UK businesses today.
Let us know what you think
Thursday, March 11, 2010 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
New Business Models
| Tags: financial,
Wendy Hart,
business models,
New Business Models,
Lead Advisory Services
Business models - the challenges facing UK businesses today
Some of our experts give us their view ...
Monday, March 08, 2010 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories:
Technology
| Tags: Design, Leaders, Jawbone, Headset, Audio Innovation, Wall Street Journal, apps
This is the coolest piece of innovation I’ve seen so far this year… the Jawbone device
Monday, March 08, 2010 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories:
Business
| Tags: market, patents, Acacia Research, design, Business Week, Rachael King, law
‘Pimp my patent’ might just be runner as an obscure digital TV channel – with exclusive membership for lawyers. Based on the USA’s cult car show ‘Pimp my ride’, patent attorneys would trawl databases for patents to buy, then sue companies who have infringed those patents. In financial innovation terms, it’s a sort of derivative market, nothing is actually made, just innovative deals made out of current legal frameworks. The presenter wouldn’t be a banker, it would be troll; where differences end and similarities begin?
Monday, March 08, 2010 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories:
Environment
| Tags: Bloom, Energy, Wired, California, Domestic, Carbon, Market, Patents, Acacia Research, Design, Leaders, Jawbone, Headset, Audio Innovation, Vogue, Stylist, Streaming, Horizonal Innovation, Bill Gates,
This is the market-making story of the month. Bloom Energy unveiled an energy server which can provide 100 kilowatts of power by converting natural gas or other hydrocarbons into electricity, pretty much on demand.
Friday, February 12, 2010 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business,
Environment,
Technology
| Tags: renewable energy,
links,
energy,
science,
car,
economist,
engineering,
eco,
euronews
This is the year for green energy. All the main players have put there money where their mouths have been for years. We will see more and more serious, competitive, ambitious lifestyle products focused on green values. Electric cars have been a persisting favourite of this column, and finally our television screens are selling us real, cool, cheaper electric cars we can be smug to be seen in.
Friday, February 12, 2010 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business
| Tags: innovation,
Mars,
Business Week
A Mars A Day, Helps You, Hmm… Make Money
“It was still a real skunkworks operation—we had one small printer, and we hand-bagged everything,” said Jim Cass, General Manager of Mars Direct. He told Business Week: “But the strategy was, ‘make a little, learn a little; make some more, learn some more.”
Wednesday, February 03, 2010 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories:
Business,
Technology
| Tags: digital, video, knowledge, literacy, i-Pad, innovation, management, start-up
The Wall Street Journal hits the mark with and article on finding the next iPod, and why it so difficult to exploit hit products.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories:
Technology
| Tags: digital, video, knowledge, literacy, i-Pad, innovation, management
Article of the week, by a hare’s breadth, is Ben McIntyre’s Fox or Hedgehog piece for The Times. Generously, for those who may have given up on reading in a digital age, Ben’s recorded a short video blog, so you can get the gist without all that grammar and words n’stuff.
Monday, January 18, 2010 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories:
Business
| Tags: innovation,
government,
entrepreneur,
google,
London Evening Standard,
Russia,
Sergey Brin,
Boris Berezovsky,
Abramovitch,
Putin,
Japan,
Dmitry Medvedev
Russia is aspiring to be a global force for the innovative and ambitious
“The secret of politics?” said Bismark, “Make a good treaty with Russia.” Otto von Bismark, Prussian Prime Minister, founder and Chancellor of the German Empire, knew how to separate roubles from rubble. Today, more than 100 years after Bismark, the dead dog of communism has awakened as a proud lion. Russia ended 2008 with GDP growth of 5.6%, following 10 straight years of growth averaging seven per cent.
Thursday, January 14, 2010 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Business,
Environment,
Healthcare,
Technology
| Tags: innovation,
links,
recession,
patent,
patents,
NHS,
teamwork,
solar power
Ingenious solar-powered designs, successful products from recessions past, radical innovation in the NHS, innovation events around the UK, and more – the Grant Thornton Innovation team aims to bring you the most popular business stories and useful links each month. Here’s what we’ve been reading…
Monday, January 11, 2010 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Technology
| Tags: innovation,
media,
technology,
global,
economist,
eco,
Sensitive Object,
augmented reality,
Wallpaper,
3-D,
Innovation Island Conference,
multiplatform
Aretha Franklin wanted us all to “reach out” and we thought it was a bit personal, but today, reaching out, touching, creates a new connection likely to integrate your finger tip with a remote control system based uniquely on acoustics.
Wednesday, December 09, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Environment
| Tags: innovation,
links,
europe,
Brazil,
Brasilia,
construction,
Los Angeles,
Climate Change Summit,
Al Gore
Brasilia was an ambitious new beginning in 1956, emerging from two intersecting lines in the red dust of Brazil’s interior. Given the opportunity, most politicians would role up a handful of their nation’s cities and sling them in the nearest bin - it would be a yellow recycling bin, obviously, with toxic signs and syringe sharps warnings.
Friday, November 20, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business
| Tags: Accountancy Age, awards, innovation, Bespoke, Elevate
Praised by the judges for our willingness to move with the times and engage with students, as well as our joined up thinking about how well we evolve into a cutting edge business, Grant Thornton won Best Use of Internet at the Accountancy Age Awards ceremony on Wednesday 18 November
Thursday, November 12, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business
| Tags: innovation,
recession,
awards,
National Business Awards,
ASOS,
Nick Robertson,
online,
Mid-Cap Business of the year,
Retail
Find out what Nick Robertson, CEO of ASOS plc, winner of Grant Thornton’s Mid-Cap Business of the Year Award, thinks about the UK’s ability to recover from recession and how innovation will help us ‘work our way out of this recession’. Filmed interview courtesy of The National Business Awards.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business
| Tags: awards,
National Business Awards,
ASOS,
Nick Robertson,
Alistair Darling,
Wesleyan Assurance Society,
The Restaurant Group,
Stobart Group,
David Maxwell,
PayPoint,
Telecity Group,
Greggs,
Scott Barnes,
Umeco,
moneysupermarket.com
We are delighted to announce that ASOS are the winners of the Grant Thornton Mid-Cap Business of the Year award. Finalists for this category had to demonstrate exceptional financial returns, strong growth and innovation strategies, and market leadership in their sector. Nick Robertson, CEO of ASOS joined us at the National Business Awards final in London on Tuesday 10th November to collect their award.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories:
Media,
Technology
| Tags: Innovation,
Facebook,
Bill Gates,
Mark Zuckerberg,
Ross Perot,
Steven Levitt,
Social media,
social networking,
Economist Innovation Award,
billionaire,
Superfreakonomics,
award,
Microsoft,
Google
Mark Zuckerberg has a huge problem – what’s he going to do next? This year’s Economist Innovation Award winner, the 24-year old billionaire creator and Facebook CEO, may have peaked too early. Until Facebook develops an application to tell the future, the profile of another Ivy League drop-out, entrepreneur and programmer provides some insight. Zuckerberg may be the next William Gates III – energetic, opportunistic, commercially savvy.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Business,
Environment,
Media,
Technology
| Tags: links,
Twitter,
robots,
TED,
climate change,
photography
This month, the Grant Thornton team has been reading about robots with smiling faces, documenting climate change using time-lapse photography and ‘tweeting’ for a taxi home…
Wednesday, September 16, 2009 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Business,
Environment,
Media,
Technology
| Tags: entrepreneurs,
links,
Cirque du Soleil,
Innovation,
music
From the reef-like nature of innovation and new ideas, to innovation lessons from the Cirque du Soleil, here’s what the Grant Thornton Innovation team has been reading about this week…
We commissioned The Economist Intelligence Unit to survey UK executives on how assumptions on business models have changed, and how companies are planning to adapt over the next 18 months.