A few days ago we focused on Finnish innovation. Now it’s time for a look at Israel, another small country punching above its weight. Israel has an unusually high number of engineers per capita, products of the highly-esteemed Technion university in Haifa. Israel is also rated just behind the US in the number of companies [...]

Today, we’re taking a look at Finnish innovation. The little Nordic country is a hotbed of ingenuity and the birthplace of successful start-ups like Angry Birds. Finland has $46 of venture capital investment per capita, leading some to call it the Arctic Valley of Europe. Here are our three favourite start-ups, and our views on [...]

Internet privacy is a hot topic. Growing public awareness of how sites like Google and Facebook use your information has gone hand in hand with high-profile privacy scandals. Similarly, more people know about the threat posed by phishing and malware. The result is a loss of trust in the Internet. Consumers want to proactively protect [...]

We usually think of geeks, techies, product developers et al as being glued 24/7 to their computer screens, but they actually, every once in a while, socialise OFFline and gather to drink beers and eat pizzas. Meetup.com, a NYC start-up, has become an offline social networking success story. Founded during the dotcom boom era, it [...]

A few weeks ago, we talked about location-based social networking from a marketing perspective. Today, we’re having a look at innovative start-ups which use geographically based technology. First up is Batchgeo, an incredibly user-friendly mapping service working in tandem with Google Maps. It converts spreadsheets full of addresses into personalized maps, saving you the labour [...]

An examination of the recent trend for high-profile celebrities to involve themselves in the hyper-saturated brave new world of emerging startups, specifically as evidenced by the recent actions of Leo DiCaprio and Ashton Kutcher.

Last month Business Insider produced a piece called  ‘no more like this or we’ll scream’ which talked about the categories of startup which are now so saturated that there’s no point in trying to penetrate them. We probably recognise these ourselves – “not another photo sharing service”, more “very similar to what I saw yesterday daily [...]

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” –Albert Einstein This Friday we’ve decided to showcase a conversation with Yoni Binstock, a young entrepreneur and member of our Innovatrs community. This American from Cleveland, Ohio has been working on an an innovative [...]

With the success and popularity of Zynga’s FarmVille and other such applications, marketers the world over have acknowledged the subtle potential of fusing entertainment with marketing, gamification, as a means of stimulating engagement and encouraging consumer participation with the brand. An exploration of the merits of using gamification tactics as a means of marketing innovatively.

As competition gets tougher and tougher more companies are using social media and crowdsourcing, asking their customers to provide ideas and help in the decision-making when tackling issues and achieving goals. Social media and crowdsourcing are powerful tools for a company to communicate with consumers when it comes to corporate social responsibility (CSR) campaigns. Businesses [...]

Buzzwords. They proliferate in the tech and innovation sector like nowhere else. Every day you hear some new expression and you’re not sure whether to whack it into your business plan and impress the investors with how happening you are, or whether it’s one of those which is going to make everyone in the room [...]

Having just been fortunate enough to provide some marketing input to the fabulous business ideas of participants in this year’s Ignite program at the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning it set me thinking about what advice is most desired by innovators and entrepreneurs and how it’s best delivered. Intensive courses, where your plan is put through [...]

As researchers continue to explore new ways to promote and improve solar power, Spanish companies are becoming world leaders in this emerging field. In the last few years the number of installed photovoltaic systems has been growing exponentially and Spain is about to become a leader in innovation and generating advanced solutions in the industry of [...]

For seven years now, Google has been struggling to get a social network off the ground. In 2009, Google launched Wave — which no one could understand. Google Buzz set off all sorts of privacy alarms. After several attempts, Google finally breaks the ice with its new social network service: Google+. The big day arrived and the [...]

American startup Lytro aim to refocus the camera world with a whole new way of taking a picture.  The Californian company’s “picture revolution” comes using a new type of lens and image sensor technology first explored in a Stanford University lab in the early 90′s. The technology doesn’t focus on a particular subject, but instead, [...]

If my apartment was broken into and my laptop nabbed I’d probably never see it again, but apparently, Joshua Kaufman, is smarter than me.  Well, in terms of laptop security anyway… Joshua, the digital designer was clever enough to spend fifteen dollars on Hidden; Flipcode’s laptop spying app, which brought him back his undamaged, but [...]

New technologies have sparked a rapidly evolving business culture, forcing organisations to re-evaluate their established processes: they must innovate or miss out on gaining a competitive edge.  Companies have traditionally focused their internal innovation resources on the limited aim of enhancing a specific set of core products, rather than the broader goal of ingenuity for [...]

Facebook is apparently valued at over $50bn; Groupon rejected a $6bn buyout from Google when the ‘deal-of-the-day’ website was only two years-old; and if rumours are to be believed, TweetDeck was recently acquired by Twitter for over $40m…not bad for a company with a mere fifteen employees. There’s little question we’re in the middle of [...]

The innovative just keep on innovating…Facebook add a new button to go with the now year old ‘Like’ feature… As we always say at Innovatrs, to be the best you have to keep busy and keep innovating. Facebook must be avid readers of the blog, as they just announced the latest in their plan to [...]

What’s the best way to innovate if you’re a big business today? Outside collaboration if you’re P&G… So you’re a big business, you know what you’re doing in your field but the time has come to freshen things up a bit and bring some new innovation to the fore – it seems the titan that [...]

The Innovatrs focus this week is on innovation within existing businesses. The core underlying theme is how innovation isn’t – or, at least, shouldn’t be – unique to startups. To quote Monday’s post, “innovation is ongoing, innovation drives business, innovation is what keeps companies ahead of the game.” Yesterday, we looked at Dell’s IdeaStorm in [...]

Yesterday we mentioned Dells IdeaStorm. Now it’s time to see what this wonderfully titled really has to offer. Is it a gimmick or a savvy piece of innovative genius from Dell? So, the facts: IdeaStorm is a website launched by Dell on February 16, 2007. The official corporate PR line was that it would allow [...]

Innovation isn’t unique to startups. Innovation is ongoing, innovations drives business, innovation is what keeps companies ahead of the game. At least, that’s what innovation should do. Innovation: not just two guys in a garage The word innovation conjures images of a couple of guys getting their heads together in a garage or spare room [...]

On Monday we pondered whether cloud computing has reached maturity yet…or whether it’s still a fledgling technology. We arrived at the conclusion that because cloud computing is seeing such great innovations, that it most certainly has reached a mature stage in its life. Coupled with the fact that a digital dalai lama such as Google [...]

So, it seems that with all the innovations currently going on, cloud computing has reached maturity, as we revealed in Monday’s post. And yesterday, we noted how cloud computing can be used as a virtual storage facility, and it is currently being used as such by the music production industry. In day three of this [...]