Innovation Blog
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
| Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories:
Business
| Tags: innovation,
energy,
healthcare,
Gordon Brown,
education,
security,
collaborative innovation,
downing street,
Saul Kaplan
Saul Kaplan explains why the most effective way to achieve meaningful change in business is to enable collaborative innovation across cubicles and industries. For those of you who heard Gordon Brown disclose that Downing Street is an open plan office, you can judge by your gut response whether you think Kaplan is right.
Continue Reading
Friday, March 12, 2010
| Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
New Business Models
| Tags: innovation,
financial,
recession,
entrepreneur,
research,
car,
economist,
New Business Models,
business models,
Alysoun Stewart
Nearly two thirds (63%) of UK businesses are hamstrung by their own business models and unprepared for the recovery according to new research from leading financial and business advisers, Grant Thornton.
How is your business responding to the recession?
Continue Reading
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.”
Continue Reading
Monday, January 18, 2010
| Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories:
Business
| Tags: innovation,
government,
entrepreneur,
google,
Russia,
Boris Berezovsky,
London Evening Standard,
Sergey Brin,
Putin,
Dmitry Medvedev,
Abramovitch,
Japan
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.
Continue Reading
Thursday, January 14, 2010
| Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Business,
Environment,
Healthcare,
Technology
| Tags: innovation,
links,
recession,
patents,
patent,
teamwork,
NHS,
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…
Continue Reading
Monday, January 11, 2010
| Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Technology
| Tags: innovation,
media,
technology,
global,
economist,
eco,
Wallpaper,
3-D,
multiplatform,
augmented reality,
Innovation Island Conference,
Sensitive Object
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.
Continue Reading
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
| Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Environment
| Tags: innovation,
links,
europe,
Brazil,
construction,
Brasilia,
Climate Change Summit,
Al Gore,
Los Angeles
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.
Continue Reading
Thursday, November 12, 2009
| Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business
| Tags: innovation,
recession,
awards,
National Business Awards,
online,
ASOS,
Nick Robertson,
Retail,
Mid-Cap Business of the year
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.
Continue Reading
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
| Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Technology
| Tags: innovation,
chart,
Twitter,
investors,
conversation,
StreamGraph,
Neoformix,
inventors,
real-time,
graph,
invention
Innovators, investors and inventors – and, no doubt, lots of other types beginning with ‘I’ – need to keep their ear to the ground. How can you do that in a fun way? With this new Twitter infographic, you can tune into real-time conversation just by typing in a keyword.
Continue Reading
Monday, August 17, 2009
| Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Business,
Technology
| Tags: innovation,
infographic,
global,
chart,
statistics,
World Patent Report,
patents
Who is leading the world in innovation right now? Using the latest data from the ‘World Patent Report: A Statistical Review’ (2008), Grant Thornton has charted the new world powers in innovation. The infographic shows which countries have filed the most patents for each dollar of research budget – and which ones have had the most patents granted. The results may surprise you…
Continue Reading
Thursday, August 13, 2009
| Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories:
Environment,
Technology
| Tags: innovation,
technology,
renewable energy,
energy,
science,
car,
engineering,
eco,
car industry,
fuel,
General Motors,
heathrow,
airport,
hydrogen
“Wanted: silent taxi driver - no jip, no ranting, no dodgy fare charges; must run on hydrogen.” Coming to a terminal near you, this sci-fi reality of urban transport is no false dawn.
For a generation, General Motors and Volkswagen have been focused on manufacturing autonomous vehicles for everyday public use. An initiative which began as a defence sector project to provide self-guided battle craft, has become a marketable public transport solution. If the auto-cabs we see on our streets within five years have a voice, they will smoothly declare: “This isn’t just innovation, this is marvellously spectacular innovation.”
Continue Reading
Thursday, August 06, 2009
| Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Environment
| Tags: innovation,
statistics,
numbers
Are you a fan of numbers? Or do you prefer to leave all that to your accountant?
Well, today’s number crunching might interest you. Internet buzz has been building around a certain sequential moment that occurs this week.
Continue Reading
Monday, July 27, 2009
| Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Technology
| Tags: innovation,
technology,
research,
global,
university,
science,
europe,
intellectual property,
engineering,
robots,
defence
http://www.wordle.net/
21st Century Western defence systems are based on Sun Tzu’s assertion: “The art of using troops is this…when ten to the enemy’s one, surround him.”
Continue Reading
Monday, July 20, 2009
| Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Environment
| Tags: innovation,
technology,
government,
renewable energy,
energy,
science,
car,
eco,
desalination,
bio fuel,
gas
When Big Oil claims its going green, seasoned market watchers sigh deeply and trade a few million barrels before lunch. More generous observers will consider Big Oil’s alternative energy ventures part R&D, part PR. But, what if the numbers really do stack up and the technology really can get beyond drilling holes in the ground?
Continue Reading
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
| Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business
| Tags: innovation,
technology,
emerging markets,
asia
Robert Atkinson, founder of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, and Iqbal Quadir, founder of MIT’s Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship, debate where innovation is moving in the 21st century in this week’s Mckinsey ‘Debate zone’.
Continue Reading
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.
Continue Reading
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.
Continue Reading
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”.
Continue Reading
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
Continue Reading
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.
Continue Reading
