BQF Innovation

For the past 7 years the European Commission has compiled an assessment of the innovation competitiveness of all the EU states and some other countries as comparisons.  The 2007 report has recently been published and you can read the full report.  The key factors that are used to compare the performance of countries are as follows:

Innovation drivers measure the structural conditions required for innovation potential, Knowledge creation measures the investments in R&D activities,  Innovation & entrepreneurship measures the efforts towards innovation at the firm level,  Applications measures the performance expressed in terms of labour and business activities and their value added in innovative sectors, and Intellectual property measures the achieved results in terms of successful know-how.

There are some 38 countries listed.  Here are the top 20:

1. Sweden
2. Switzerland
3. Finland
4. Israel
5. Denmark
6. Japan
7. Germany
8. UK
9. USA
10. Iceland
11. Ireland
12. Austria
13. Netherlands
14. France
15. Belgium
16. (EU Average)
17. Canada
18. Estonia
19. Australia
20. Norway

The report states that  the innovation gap between the EU and its two main competitors, the US and Japan, has been falling but remains significant. The US keeps its lead in 11 out of 15 indicators and Japan keeps its lead in 12 out of 14 such indicators.  A comparison over time shows that the EU is experiencing an increasing lead over the US in Science and Engineering graduates, employment in medium-high and high-tech manufacturing and Community trademarks, and a stable lead in Community designs. The EU is experiencing a declining gap with the US in broadband penetration, early-stage venture capital, ICT expenditures and triad patents. But the gap with the US is increasing in public R&D expenditures and high-tech exports.

The report is rather dry and it involves some estimates that can be challenged.  It would be better if China, India, Brazil and some other countries were included but their data is not available.  However, it is the best comparison we have and contains some very revealing data.

Paul Sloane

Here is an interesting article on collaborative innovation in the Exchange Morning Post.

It draws on the collaborative experiences of Advanced Micro Devices and IBM, Renault and Nissan, Nike, Reuters and others.  Key lessons are that success takes time and depends strongly on a shared strategic outlook and a deep level of trust.

Paul Sloane

We had an excellent meeting on Feb 5th.  It was kindly hosted by the Royal Mail at their offices in Old Street.   The meeting started with a talk from Robin Mar of Royal Mail who gave examples of the successes and difficulties that they have had with innovation.  They introduced a prize competition in order to reduce absenteeism among their 180,000 employees.  Despite some scorn in the press it was a big success and reduced absenteeism by 26%.  Robin shared some other examples including their driver risk assessment scheme and some highly innovative direct mail initiatives.  Among the issues he discussed were inertia, risk aversion and insularity.

Matt McNulty of consultants Mouchel then gave a presentation on their innovation efforts.  Some of his intriguing examples included allowing traffic to use the hard shoulder on the M42, which Mouchel recommended to the Highways Agency.  When Mouchel had a problem with silo mentality at a client they came up with a board game which people played to learn the interdendency between departments.  Mouchel have 250 innovation champions to aid the idea generation and implementation process.

We finished with an interactive exercise on Transformers - a technique to force creative thinking in a process or procedure.  The teams came up with some great ideas and the feedback was excellent.  Copies of the presentations are available to BQF members from Pat Myles.

 Paul Sloane