Innovation is driven by demanding clients”. Or, do demands for certainty and risk aversion act an inhibitor to innovation? My experience is that such demands are often misconceived and in fact there is a very positive synergy between risk reduction and innovation - yet the constraint remains. What is your experience?
Alan Powderham, Mott MacDonald
Businessweek publishes an annual list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies as ranked by a poll of its readers. The 2006 list is here:
http://www.businessweek.com/pdfs/2006/0617_top25.pdf
The top names are:
1. Apple
2. Google
3. 3M
4. Toyota
5. Microsoft
6. G.E.
The leading European companies are Nokia (8), Virgin (11) and BMW (16). What do you think of this list? Do you agree with the rankings? Who do you think should be on there?
The first meeting of the BQF Innovation Unit will take place on 12 September. Venue and detailed arrangements are still to be finalised but the important thing is to put the date in your diary.
Equally important is the theme which will be ‘HOW TO IMPLEMENT IDEAS QUICKLY’. In our survey in October 2005, this was the number one issue.
The themes we have pencilled in for subsequent meetings are: ‘Idea generation’, ‘Idea evaluation’ and ‘Barriers to implementation’. We would welcome any views on whether these are good choices (the research says they are) and whether there are other subjects that we should tackle first.