Innovation, sustainability and the future of cities
A business needs to constantly develop to survive. Just like a living organism, you must adapt to changes in your environment. New technologies, consumer attitudes, regulatory requirements and cost structures constantly turn over your market, changing the routes to success.
In 1892 the wonderfully named Captain Matthew Henry Phineas Riall Sankey became lead engineer and steam engine designer for Willans and Robinson. The efficiency of steam engines was a hot topic, and he needed to understand and communicate where the
In your innovation journey, you will have to talk to your customers to find out whether your new idea works for them. After all, we know that the number one reason for innovations falling flat is that they solve a
Years ago, I asked a surgeon how they learnt a new procedure; you can’t operate on a patient with a textbook propped open on a convenient part of their body. They said it was very simple; “you watch one, you
We have all heard variations of the joke “A consultant is someone who borrows your watch to tell you the time, and then keeps the watch”. They get a lot of flak; some of it richly deserved. Their methods and
When you are only working on one innovation project at a time, you can give it all the care and attention it needs. There are no competing resource demands; at least for creating new products and services. Life gets more
We all recognise that it is hard to make change happen. This is nothing new. In the early 16th C Machiavelli commented in The Prince “There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain
To make progress towards a circular economy we need innovation. New products and services, new methods and new approaches. The challenge is, first of all, to find inspiration for innovative ideas, and secondly, to be able to compare different options
We live in a big and complex world faced with big and complex problems; climate change, population growth, environmental degradation and inequality. In these mega-challenges, as well as the apparently simpler task of running a city or creating a
Innovators need to be persuasive In my career in industrial R&D and innovation I spent a lot of time trying to persuade people to give me the resources I needed to execute my ideas, or to persuade them to try
“Social Styles – an Influencing Tool” We all want to influence or persuade other people. We want to recruit their support, to gain investment or access to resources, to form a partnership, or to get them to try something new.
You Need More than Product Innovation Innovation is about much more than just creating a new product or service. Innovation should apply to all parts of a business; from supply chain and logistics to the relationship with customers and how