Meeting with the Minister for Science and Innovation

Today we had a summit meeting on Innovation between BQF members and senior officials from the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills including Lord Drayson, the Minister of State for Science and Innovation.   It was a lively and interactive dialogue.  DIUS speakers included Christine Hewitt, Deputy Director of Innovation Delivery, Fergus Harradence, Deputy Director of [...]

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False Assumptions led to the Hillsborough Disaster

This week has seen the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster in which 96 Liverpool fans died in a terrible crush at the Hillsborough football stadium in Sheffield.

One of the main reasons for the tragedy was that the policemen in charge of crowd control assumed that the problem they were facing was one [...]

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How to get a whole country Brainstorming.

In May 2008 a remarkable nationwide initiative took place in Estonia, bringing together more than 50 000 volunteers to clean-up illegal waste from all over the countryside.   This extraordinary project helped to change the waste department system as well as the people’s perspectives on the environment and on civil activeness.

They are following up [...]

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Open Innovation and Innocentive

We are now on the brink of a major evolution of open innovation according to an article by  John Hagel and John Seely Brown in BusinessWeek.   They describe the success of Innocentive, the first global Internet-based platform designed to help connect Seekers, those who had difficult research problems, with Solvers, those who came up with creative [...]

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Innovating on Slender Means

The problem is the recession.  It is hurting businesses large and small.  The answer is innovation.  Innovation can help you to cut costs, improve margins, retain customers, acquire new customers, gain market share and ultimately to survive.  But when you are cutting costs and squeezing resources in all areas how can you find the people, [...]

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