Innovation Blog
Friday, July 10, 2009 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories:
Education
| Tags: innovation,
media,
financial,
government,
entrepreneur,
university,
car,
india,
talent
Neutron Jack is back. Jack Welch, General Electric’s supercharged former CEO, is putting formidable wealth right next to his informative mouth, launching a new online MBA which he claims will compete with bricks and mortar programmes.
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Wednesday, July 01, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Healthcare
| Tags: government,
healthcare,
google,
medicine
Each year, hospital errors kill five times as many Americans as AIDS. Scared? There’s more. According to the Institute of Medicine, hospital errors kill more people than car accidents or breast cancer. So, pop quiz. Do you think society in general is more or less trusting of medical institutions?
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Thursday, June 25, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business,
Healthcare
| Tags: health,
john wilden,
global healthcare
“Global Healthcare Futures (GHF) is a UK company that is the brain child of John Wilden, a former specialist and consultant neurosurgeon. GHF is developing and promoting software products for “Time to Cure” and “Cost to Cure” Common Diseases based on the advances of molecular biology and other technologies which will underpin the fast looming world of curative global healthcare, thereby ushering in a new age of diminishing healthcare costs across the developed and developing world”.
Dr Tim Evans, Chairman of Global Health Futures
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Wednesday, June 24, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business
| Tags: investment,
bonds
Will King, founder of grooming product firm, King of Shaves, is asking his customers to buy £5m in bonds to finance expansion of the brand. It’s a move believed to be the first instance of a company turning directly to its customers to raise investment funds.
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Tuesday, June 23, 2009 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories:
Business,
Technology
| Tags: innovation,
financial,
technology,
government,
research,
energy,
university,
science,
innovators,
car
One per cent of the energy we burn driving a car is used to move the driver. In one hundred years of automotive innovation, mankind has fought financial and military battles over oil reserves; only to announce that 99% of our effort was to shift a hunk of metal. Maybe we should have kept the horses.
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Monday, June 08, 2009 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories:
Environment,
Technology
| Tags: innovation,
technology,
energy,
science,
innovators,
india,
economist
Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Chairman of food giant Nestlé, told the Economist’s ‘The World in 2009’: “under present conditions… we will run out of water long before we run out of fuel”.
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Tuesday, June 02, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business
| Tags: innovation,
financial,
international,
emerging markets,
talent
“We need to reinvent ourselves and invest in innovation to compete in the emerging markets”, writes Gerard Lyons in the Sunday Times 31 May 2009
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Friday, May 29, 2009 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories:
Business,
Environment
| Tags: innovation,
government,
entrepreneurs,
renewable energy,
energy,
science,
europe
OPEC has delayed 35 of 150 scheduled oil production projects. Oil prices have swirled between $147 a barrel last July, to $32 per barrel in February. China has announced investment of $400bn in solar energy production.
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Thursday, May 28, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business,
Environment
| Tags: innovation,
government,
renewable energy,
national grid,
biogas
National Grid’s Head of Sustainable Gas Group, Janine Freeman, discusses their approach to innovation, including the opportunities and hurdles surrounding their quest to meet sustainable energy targets. In particular, she offers insight into the potential for injecting Biogas – the innovative renewable energy source – into National Grid pipelines. Compiled of the UK’s various waste streams, Biogas has the potential to simultaneously cut methane and carbon emissions, boost renewable energy capacity and provide a domestic replacement to waning North Sea gas reserves.
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Thursday, May 21, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business,
Media,
Technology
| Tags: innovation,
media,
technology,
digital
Alex Johns, MD of iblink left his job with Siemens 3 years to start up iblink which filled the niche created by technologists who knew a lot about technology and less about marketing and marketeers who knew a lot about marketing but little about technology. Today iblink is an award winning digital marketing business with a number of blue chips clients such as Titan, Superdrug, Bluewater, P&G and Unilever.
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Thursday, May 21, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business,
Technology
| Tags: innovation,
media,
technology,
microtrend,
twitter,
virul marketing,
google
Google admits it has something to learn from Twitter….
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Friday, May 15, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business,
Technology
| Tags: innovation,
media,
technology,
science,
amazon
“Jeff Bezos is outpacing our expectations,” wrote an analyst of Amazon’s CEO…
His much-viewed appearance on ‘The Daily Show with John Stewart’ was classic Bezos, nerdy, smiley, hyperactive. Struggling, just a little, to convince Stewart we’ll all read from slim digital screens in the future, he rocked back and forwards with laughter, like Spock on a rollercoaster.
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Wednesday, May 13, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Environment
| Tags: innovation
In the Times today Rob Killick at cScape talks about why we should be encouraging the “spirit of innovation” in the UK today
“...we want post-recession Britain to mean something on the world stage. We do not want to end up as losers in a world of opportunity. And to do that we need politicians who inspire us to achieve things “not because they are easy but because they are hard”.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6275948.ece
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Tuesday, May 12, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business
| Tags: innovation,
jackie hunter,
pharmaceutical
Jackie Hunter is the Senior-Vice President and Head of External Science Development at GlaxoSmithKline. Here she discusses how innovation is encouraged and challenges are overcome at the pharmaceutical, through its continuous evolution on both an internal and external level.
Appointed in 2008, within Dr. Hunter’s remit at GlaxosmithKline is the development of a more open and transparent global R&D architecture, which includes developing new ways of working with academia and publically funded bodies.
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Friday, May 08, 2009 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories:
Healthcare
| Tags: innovation,
entrepreneur,
energy,
science,
healthcare,
pharmaceuticals,
nanotechnology
Defence of our nation’s health persists as a matter of priority. It’s an irrational position to take, for ultimately the nation cannot preserve our health, we all expire, a bit like identity cards. Our expectation, is that one day we won’t shuffle off this mortal coil, but just go for a refit, an upgrade, popping into Me-Me World at lunch to get memory chips expanded and a couple of heart valves replaced.
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Friday, May 01, 2009 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories:
Business,
Education,
Technology
| Tags: innovation,
financial,
technology,
research,
university,
europe,
intellectual property,
economist,
patent,
entrepreneurial,
capitalism
Seventy years ago, Schumpeter, economist and entrepreneurial cheerleader, declared the pending death of capitalism and the rise of sober socialism – the consequence, he said, of the innovation equivalent of corporate perpetual motion.
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Wednesday, April 29, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business,
Education
| Tags: government,
intellectual property,
teri willey,
cambridge enterprise,
ip laws
Turning great science concepts into commercial reality.
Teri Willey, Chief Executive, Cambridge Enterprise spoke with a Grant Thornton representative at the Economist ‘Innovation Island’ conference. Tasked with leading innovative research oriented companies to commercial success, Willey said it is important to shield innovators from excessive managerial constraints, to let them ‘do the science’ then lead them through financial and governance processes. She bolsters Britain’s claim to be a leading centre of innovation, saying our overall approach provides an opportunity to leap ahead of the United States, her home nation.
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Friday, April 24, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business,
Technology
| Tags: innovation
Marie Wold discusses the drivers of innovation at OnRelay, including the role of stakeholders, the financial gains, and ultimately the thrill of developing new technologies. Marie founded OnRelay, a software company specialising in fixed mobile convergence – an innovative technology integrating mobile phones into fixed telephony networks, 9 years ago.
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Friday, April 24, 2009 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories:
Business,
Technology
| Tags: technology,
innovators,
broadband,
financial innovation,
starbucks,
mobile financial services,
telecoms,
voip,
global banking,
3-d imaging
Data is about to drive some of the biggest mergers and acquisitions the global markets have ever seen. Some banks are preparing for a breathtaking integration of telecom delivery channels which will leave their competitors gasping for growth.
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Tuesday, April 21, 2009 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories:
Business,
Technology
| Tags: government,
nuclear,
economist intelligence unit,
geneva motor show,
electric cars
Some years from now, there will be less talk of economic gambling and more on how we played a steady hand in heavy seas. We will talk of how innovation, and investment in electric cars, changed the way we live our lives, how green cars became the catalyst for economic recovery and a beacon of British science and ambition.
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