Great British inventions
Jan 26 2010
Being British sometimes feels synonymous with a resigned acceptance of disappointment. A feeling football, cricket and tennis fans know all too well. Having brought these great sports to the world, we can now quietly murmur into our pints that we’re ‘not bad’ at most of them.
Even as we emerge from recession today, our recovery is way behind most other developed countries (Germany and France returned to growth last summer) and comes at a very marginal increase of 0.1 per cent. It’s almost as if we were the chubby kid at a sports day event gasping to reach the finishing line while everyone else leisurely sips orange squash.
Strange then that in a poll from SmallBusiness.co.uk 31 per cent of the 538 respondents said this Sceptered Isle was the top country for business. Or is it?
You don’t have to go as far back as Alexander Graham Bell to find examples of eminent British innovators. The wind-up radio, the iPod and the World Wide Web, were all created by Brits. When it comes to brilliant ideas, we’re still a world-class country.
This heritage of invention was something Dragons’ Den James Caan acknowledged when he said that it was innovative SMEs who were the key to bringing us out of recession. Adding: ‘Over the last ten to 15 years we’ve become dependent on the financial services sector, for the UK to overcome our current challenges we need another solution.’
It’s a good point. Despite large amounts of stimulus pumped into this area of the economy, there are still concerns of a frail recovery or a ‘double-dip’ recession.
Perhaps it truly is time to concentrate on what we do best: creating great business ideas.
Comment by Rosie Heptonstall
Tuesday 26th January 2010I think there's often an assumption that innovation is only needed in the early stages of a business. As is often the case, once a business has settled into comfortable growth there can be a tendency to get caught up in other areas that are equally important, such as sales and marketing, but can't carry the business indefinitely.
All businesses, whatever their stage of growth, need to think about their next horizon (as laid out by McKinsey and co.)and how they're going to get there. That means constant investment in research and development so that growth becomes a sustainable process.
Report this comment
Comments [1]