Member Article

What does innovation really mean?

To coincide with our new Innovation Survey, Hugh Rhodes, innovation director at Newcastle Science City explains what innovation means to him.

What innovation in the last 10 years has had the most impact in your life? iPhones? Feed in tariffs? Low cost airlines? Social media?

What innovation in the last 10 years has had the biggest impact on your business? New scientific understanding? New business models? New channels to market? Off shore low cost production? Cloud computing?

Is the innovation the iphone or is it mobile telephones of which the iphone is one example?

Do the people you meet mean the same thing as you when they talk about innovation? I have the feeling that many of the people I meet have different views from me on innovation. Through inference I guess some of them have a specific definition which they use consistently; some have a use that seems to encompass all definitions; and some throw it randomly into the conversation to add a sort of glitter to what they are trying to sell.

I am interested in innovation for value creation. I sometimes refer to this as ‘innovation for profit’ which doesn’t communicate exactly what I mean but it gets the underlying message across i.e. some sort of outcome to the innovation.

For me the outcome has to be an uplift in value creation; by value creation I mean doing something which another individual or entity finds of value (and in economic terms something they will pay for). When someone explains to me how their innovation will generate value I am always interested. If they then explain to me how their business is setup to exploit this innovation for value creation and how it will go on to create more - then I would describe that as an innovative business.

My interest and passion comes from two areas. One is for wealth creation; one is for the economic development of our region. These two areas are intrinsically linked. The development of innovation for value creation is what investors are looking for, however some innovations will be longer in their development and the customer’s uptake than others. Understanding the timescale is crucial to understanding what sort of investment will be required for the opportunity to realise its potential, and the availability of investment often impacts on the development strategy selected.

The North East has all of the requirements for driving forward economic development based on innovation. We have strong regional universities and centres of research generating both knowledge and talent. We have a workforce capable of adapting to new processes and working in new ways. We have strong clusters of activity in both traditional and high technology areas. We have finance available through various sources and we have champions accelerating and expanding the innovation networks. Understanding innovation for value creation and innovation-led economic development, we can make breakthroughs that are needed right now and in the future.

Over the next few months I will be helping to generate new innovative businesses through the Newcastle Innovation Machine building on that which has been learned over the past year to contribute to the city’s and region’s goal of innovation driven economic development.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .