Innovation update

The new business magazine by Grant Thornton (Elevate) carries a number of articles about innovation. Amongst the most interesting points are:

• There is a new £4.5m state of the art Digital Manufacturing Centre with facilities for rapid prototyping at the Metrolopolitan Works Creative Industries Centre in London.

• Larry Keeley of strategy firm Doblin Inc developed a diagnostic tool called Innovation Landscape to graphically display activity, change, development and opportunity in a given industry. Clients work through ten types of innovation that can raise a company’s success rate.

• Charles Leadbeater’s latest book “We-Think” explores the way online sharing of views, ideas and information will change global government, business, science and culture and there is a YouTube video that explains more.

• Chris Brogan gives specific and practical advice to those hoping to use social media tools to change their business’s future

• The top 30 innovations of the last 30 years provided by The Wharton School in Pennsylvanian and US television show Nightly Business Report includes:
o Internet
o Personal computers
o Mobile phones
o Email
o DNA mapping
o MRI scans
o Microprocessors
o Fibre optics
o Office software
o Robotic surgery
o Restriction free software
o LEDs
o LCDs
o GPS
o Online shopping
o File compression
o Microfinance
o Solar energy
o Wind turbines
o Social networking sites
o Graphic user interface
o Digital cameras
o RFID
o GM plants
o Biofuels
o Bar codes
o ATMs
o Stents
o SRAM
o Antiretrovirals

Grant Thornton also provides a great blog on innovation at www.grant-thornton.co.uk/thinking. And it also offers 'Innovation Island: is the UK open for business?' by the Economist Intelligence Unit.