British firms leading on innovation
THE UK is identified as a breeding ground for new ideas after a report finds it harbours a quarter of the world's most innovative companies.
Research by consultancy Innovaro found that five of the biggest names in UK business were outperforming their global rivals in areas such as growth, brand value and product launches in 2005.
- Tesco was seen as more innovative than Wal-Mart - the world's biggest retailer - after a decade of rapid growth that included the launch of the UK's first customer loyalty card and moves into financial services and online shopping.
- The research also found Royal Bank of Scotland leading the way in the banking sector,
- BP ahead in energy,
- Virgin Atlantic as the top airline, and
- Reckitt Benckiser pipping US giant Kimberley Clark to the post of leading household products firm.
It marks an improvement on 2004 when Tesco and BP were the only UK firms to secure top rankings from Innovaro for innovation.
Innovaro, a consultancy based in London and Amsterdam, analysed the innovation of 1,000 leading companies across 20 sectors from aerospace, airlines and fashion to sports and pharmaceuticals.
It drew its conclusions from measuring firms against criteria such as strategic focus, product launches, growth, brand value and culture."
2 Comments:
Admittedly, this survey is now 9 months old, and the recent Cox review on innovation was only published on Dec 01 last year, but according to the UK government and NESTA's very quick response, this is not the way things are! Looking at the criteria Innovaro used for deciding on which companies are 'innovative', I am not surprised. They seem merely to have exchanged the words 'innovation' for criteria such as R&D, patents, product launch, capital growth and so on, which traditionally measure company performance anyway. What is innovative about that?
Or better put [and with apologies] lest the previous comment seem inadvertently confronting, I merely wonder why the word 'innovation' is lately being used as the key indicator for company performance, when it seems, to all intents and purposes, that industry is doing what it has always done - only some are improving faster than others? As far as I know, there is no ISO standard, no agreed measure of the process of learning which leads to growth ... and perhaps everyone is happy without it ...
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