The Internet. Made for talking cats and skateboarding dogs. Oh, and innovative startups. So as we’re at that silly time of the year when people are trawling around Youtube looking for more cuddly things on video, we thought we’d show you 6 ways your startup is rather similar to your miaowing pal. 1. You own [...]

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 [...]

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.

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.

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 [...]

Google’s latest involvement in the green scene comes in the form of a study, inspired by the US energy policy debate.  The report conducted by the search engine’s .org department explores the possible benefits of changes in US government policies on clean power, electric car development, natural gas and grid storage. Using a calculation model [...]

Around since 1932, Lego was recently named the ‘most popular toy ever made,’ not surprising, considering there are 62 Lego blocks for every person on earth…   So have the Danish company changed with the times, or are they about to stale? After Lego’s financial slump between 98 and 2003, the company went through a major [...]

Just over a year after the coalition promise to become the ‘greenest government’ ever, uncertainties and policy changes stir a confidence crisis in the UK’s cleantech industry. With countries like Finland, South Korea and China still investing strong in the industry, the UK’s cleantech sector is falling short on its promise of economic growth and [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

So where did these business incubators spring up from and what are the plus and minus points for your business? I take a look… The concept of business incubation began in the US as far back as 1959. The first considered instance was when Joseph Mancuso opened the Batavia Industrial Center in a warehouse in New York. The [...]

Armed with a time-machine, what epoch would you travel back to? Would you travel back to witness the birth of Christ? Or maybe you’d go and have a quick peek at Michelangelo working on his Sistine Chapel masterpiece? If you’re looking to use the benefit of hindsight to build a multi-billion dollar digital powerhouse, maybe [...]

How does a three-man start-up become a £132m powerhouse within a decade? Innovation, that’s how. Innocent Drinks was launched in 1999 by three friends actively seeking to start their own company. A number of ideas were bandied about, and eventually Richard Reed, Adam Balon and Jon Wright opted to start a smoothie company. Was it [...]

‘Young people need confidence to be inventive and the support to be bold’. Not our words, but those of Sir James Dyson – he might just have a point… He’s famous for bag-less vacuum cleaners and extremely good hand driers, he also happens to be a man of great wisdom. Sir James Dyson, the inventor [...]

As you will know from reading this blog regularly, we at Innovatrs believe strongly about business progression through innovation. To be honest, you can probably tell that by our name! Putting that belief into practice, there is some very good news for Oxford startups… You know Oxford. It’s that leafy town in southern England that [...]

The companies participating in Sustainable Brands 2010 are functioning models of the evolving relationship between sustainability and innovation. A 2008 report titled “A New Mindset for Corporate Sustainability” was co-sponsored by BT and Cisco, and was written by six academic experts from the United States, China, United Kingdom, Singapore and Spain. According to the report, [...]

Plenty of people talk the talk, but what does it really take to walk the walk? What makes the perfect entrepreneur? A lot of people like to think of themselves as entrepreneurs. This might mean starting their own moderately successful business or just being a bit of a dodgy dealer type character. But as Alan [...]

That Obama is a smart man, isn’t he? He has decided that the answer to the U.S economy’s problems is Innovation. Well, yeah Obama, what took you so long? The ‘leader of the free world’ has expressed his hope of “sparking the minds of innovators” in the United States, making the U.S of A more [...]

Intel have always seemed like a very straight laced, corporate affair. By no means out of touch, but hardly a company with flair or swagger. It seems the way Intel have decided to remedy that situation is by injecting a bit of Hip Hop in to the business… I got that Boom Boom Pow he [...]

Unless you’ve been living under a rock or don’t care much for technology, you’ll have seen that tablet devices and apps are taking over the World. But do these new technologies make computing too straight forward – Are they dumbing down the average computer user? There is no doubt that tablets like the iPad are [...]

2010 has been a vintage year for innovation. R&D teams across the globe have gone into overdrive, with the main focus on going green and the intuitive exchange of information and ideas. The usual suspects have been prevalent in their innovation; Apple, Google, Facebook, Sony and Panasonic all deserving of special praise. Below we’ve compiled a [...]

In an age where companies are even more accountable to the consumer than ever, it is lean startups that are changing the landscape of bringing a new product or brand to market efficiently and cost effectively. As most startups begin under the tightest of financial restraints, it is companies that make the biggest use of [...]