If you want to be the best – innovation’s what you need
As the countdown continues to the Gloucestershire Business Awards STEWART BARNES, managing director of Quolux – sponsors of the Lifetime Achievement Award – explores the forms of innovation show by past winners
INNOVATION is evident in many of the county’s most successful and enduring businesses. Examples may spring to mind of clever new technologies and products that deliver original and better ways of meeting a customer need or desire, while generating sufficient commercial return to make the innovation viable.
But when we dig a little deeper the pursuit of innovation is about much more than this – it offers a way of thinking and behaving that adds value to a business in pursuit of its overall strategy.
It is as relevant for service-led companies as manufacturers, long-established firms or young entrepreneurial start-ups, for the customer service or finance team as much as the product development or marketing team.
Thinking about innovation as a scalable range of activities, from continuous improvement to breakthrough products or services that disrupt the market, embraces every part of an organisation.
It is not the sole domain of R&D. It becomes a company-wide pursuit of better – of fresh ways of looking at all that you do to be distinctive in your market.
Sir David Mcmurtry and John Deer, the founders of Renishaw, were the deserved recipients of the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014.
Renishaw is rightly held up as a shining example of technical innovation. From humble beginnings as engineering apprentices, Sir David and John met at Rolls-royce in Bristol in 1973.
Sir David had solved a problem for Concorde by inventing a patentable new product, while John displayed great commercial aptitude. Setting up business together, production began in a garage and from these roots grew one of the world’s leading engineering and scientific technology companies.
Its expertise in precision measurement and healthcare sees its products and services used in applications as diverse as jet engine and wind turbine manufacture through to dentistry and brain surgery.
Sir David is an engineer with an irrepressible curiosity and drive to improve performance. This was clear when he delivered a special masterclass for the delegates on our GAIN programme, focused on the leadership of innovation, which inspired each delegate to drive innovation in their own businesses. He shared insights into the importance of patents when devising new tools and techniques, but his approach to innovation encompasses far more than the technical brilliance that has earned the firm several prestigious Queen’s Awards.
He encourages observation, taking the time to look, understand and consider how current ways of working may be improved. This rigorous, open-minded dedication to continuous improvement pervades every part of Renishaw.
It is reflected in their values and captured in the Orange Book which all employees have as a guide to a common company-wide approach.
Over the next five weeks we’ll show how different aspects of leading innovation can have relevance for every forward-thinking firm, as demonstrated by our celebrated Lifetime Achievement Award winners hall of fame.
» Quolux are leadership development and strategy specialists based in Cheltenham