When asked what arsenal a business must pack in order to be successful, many of us will reel off a standard roll call.

First, the firm must have adequate finance, then the ability to control and predict those finances. It must have skilled, knowledgeable, effective staff. It must know its customers and be able to market itself professionally.

So is that the fundamentals, all present and correct? Well, it’s not a bad start, but increasingly another factor is being recognised as the difference between the victors and the also-rans in the fight for business success.

That factor is innovation. The ability to come up with new ideas to develop the business and the way it serves its customers, the ability to unlock the creativity hidden - deeply perhaps - within us has been identified as key to most businesses that enjoy sustained success.

This was highlighted in the 1994 European Commission's 1995 Green Paper on Innovation. As a result of this paper, the West of Scotland Regional Innovation Strategy (RIS) was created in 1997 to promote and support innovation. It was part funded by the European Regional Development Fund through the West of Scotland Operational Programme via the Strathclyde European Partnership.

The RIS adopted a partnership approach working with funding partners including the European Commission, the Scottish Executive, South Lanarkshire Council and other local authorities, Scottish Enterprise and Small Business Gateways.

Together they set out to establish Western Scotland as the most innovative region in Europe by increasing the number of innovative companies; enhancing the education sector's ability to support innovation; and improving the overall environment for innovation.

A study by the RIS’s found that innovation wasn’t just about research, commercialisation and development of new products and processes. Equally important are: company culture; development of new skills through training; and new forms of management, organisation and working practices.

The RIS has developed priority projects to look at different methods of encouraging a culture of innovation. One of the ways in which it is promoting innovation and creativity is through, appropriately enough, an innovative and creative CD-ROM.

It offers a practical and user-friendly means of kick-starting the innovation process within your company, by using the quirky story of BlueEyes to bring the subject alive.

The CD-ROM contains such pointers as the importance of developing the right attitude. “The innovative company recognises that change is inevitable and that the pace of change is constantly increasing,” the text explains. “It recognises to survive, it is necessary to encourage and embrace new ideas.”

As well as valuable advice on how innovation relates to staff, customers, developing ideas, finance, the CD ROM offers useful profiles of companies that have found success through innovation.

There is also a section with questions to test your innovation potential and a list of links to useful organisations involved in innovation.

For more information on Innovation for Business Growth, the RIS, or other innovation issues contact John Batchelor on 01698 455129.

Business South Lanarkshire - Spring 2002

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