Starting at the beginning...

Welcome to my blog. My overall aim is to provide a general overview of innovation and relate this to various industries, companies and TV programmes. Reference is made to University talks from several organisations. IBM and Enterprise-rent-a-car were both talks lead by placement students who explained the company background as well as describing their industrial placements; providing me with useful and relevant information to include in parts of my blog. The Virgin Atlantic event was arranged by the University’s Marketing Advertising and Public Relations Society (MAPR) where the Sales and Marketing Director, Paul Dickinson, gave a very informative and interesting talk giving an outline of Virgin’s history as well as some successful innovations, insights into their marketing campaigns and the everyday running of the company.

Now to introduce the concept of innovation…
Innovation has become an integral part of many, mostly all, businesses as a method of survival in today’s tough economic environmental conditions. Since the global recession began in 2008, businesses have been struggling to survive and have had to devise new strategies as a result to compete and most importantly, survive.

In general, the economy has shifted from one focussed on "material products and transactions" to a "creative economy in which ideas and knowledge are the new capital" (Bilton, C. 2007:24); illustrating the important role of innovation.

In McKeown’s book, “The truth about innovation”, he defines the term as “new stuff that is made useful” (2008:2). However, innovation is regarded as being more complex than this but has been simplified here for ease of understanding. The ‘usefulness’ of the innovative product(s) is determined by the perceptions of the consumer; highlighting the importance of customer-led production in terms of research and development. Although costly in the short term, research can yield significant long term results through the creation of products that the consumers and market are willing to purchase.

Despite being described above as “new stuff”, the term also accommodates for the improvements of old ideas, versions and models. Constantly researching consumer wants, concerns of existing models and proposals for improvement can form the basis of a business’ innovative ideas.

Previously, concepts such as creativity and innovation were the sole responsibility of departments such as Marketing where creative advertising was used. Now, however, creativity and innovation have become significantly important. As a result, it has become a part of every department and involves every employee within an organisation; regardless of size.

The YouTube video below demonstrates the various aspects of innovation and its importance. The views expressed are from people of business backgrounds at the Lisbon Council Innovation Summit in 2010.