Innovation Blog
Friday, April 09, 2010 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
New Business Models,
Business,
Media
| Tags: media,
technology,
government,
business models,
Mark Henshaw,
Finance Bill,
Digital Economy Bill,
Landline tax,
Spotify
“The digital sector plays a vital role in the UK economy and the Government is attempting to acknowledge this via the
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Wednesday, March 31, 2010 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories:
Business
| Tags: innovation,
energy,
education,
healthcare,
Gordon Brown,
security,
collaborative innovation,
Saul Kaplan,
downing street
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Monday, March 08, 2010 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories:
Business
| Tags: market, patents, Acacia Research, design, Business Week, Rachael King, law
‘Pimp my patent’ might just be runner as an obscure digital TV channel – with exclusive membership for lawyers. Based on the USA’s cult car show ‘Pimp my ride’, patent attorneys would trawl databases for patents to buy, then sue companies who have infringed those patents. In financial innovation terms, it’s a sort of derivative market, nothing is actually made, just innovative deals made out of current legal frameworks. The presenter wouldn’t be a banker, it would be troll; where differences end and similarities begin?
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Friday, February 12, 2010 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business,
Environment,
Technology
| Tags: links,
renewable energy,
energy,
engineering,
science,
car,
economist,
eco,
euronews
This is the year for green energy. All the main players have put there money where their mouths have been for years. We will see more and more serious, competitive, ambitious lifestyle products focused on green values. Electric cars have been a persisting favourite of this column, and finally our television screens are selling us real, cool, cheaper electric cars we can be smug to be seen in.
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Friday, February 12, 2010 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business
| Tags: innovation,
Business Week,
Mars
A Mars A Day, Helps You, Hmm… Make Money
“It was still a real skunkworks operation—we had one small printer, and we hand-bagged everything,” said Jim Cass, General Manager of Mars Direct. He told Business Week: “But the strategy was, ‘make a little, learn a little; make some more, learn some more.”
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Wednesday, February 03, 2010 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories:
Business,
Technology
| Tags: digital, video, knowledge, literacy, i-Pad, innovation, management, start-up
The Wall Street Journal hits the mark with and article on finding the next iPod, and why it so difficult to exploit hit products.
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Monday, January 18, 2010 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories:
Business
| Tags: innovation,
entrepreneur,
government,
google,
Russia,
Japan,
Boris Berezovsky,
Abramovitch,
Sergey Brin,
London Evening Standard,
Dmitry Medvedev,
Putin
Russia is aspiring to be a global force for the innovative and ambitious
“The secret of politics?” said Bismark, “Make a good treaty with Russia.” Otto von Bismark, Prussian Prime Minister, founder and Chancellor of the German Empire, knew how to separate roubles from rubble. Today, more than 100 years after Bismark, the dead dog of communism has awakened as a proud lion. Russia ended 2008 with GDP growth of 5.6%, following 10 straight years of growth averaging seven per cent.
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Thursday, January 14, 2010 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Business,
Environment,
Healthcare,
Technology
| Tags: innovation,
links,
recession,
NHS,
teamwork,
patents,
patent,
solar power

Ingenious solar-powered designs, successful products from recessions past, radical innovation in the NHS, innovation events around the UK, and more – the Grant Thornton Innovation team aims to bring you the most popular business stories and useful links each month. Here’s what we’ve been reading…
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Friday, November 20, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business
| Tags: Accountancy Age, awards, innovation, Bespoke, Elevate

Praised by the judges for our willingness to move with the times and engage with students, as well as our joined up thinking about how well we evolve into a cutting edge business, Grant Thornton won Best Use of Internet at the
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Thursday, November 12, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business
| Tags: innovation,
recession,
awards,
online,
National Business Awards,
Nick Robertson,
ASOS,
Retail,
Mid-Cap Business of the year
Find out what Nick Robertson, CEO of
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Wednesday, November 11, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business
| Tags: awards,
National Business Awards,
Alistair Darling,
Scott Barnes,
Nick Robertson,
ASOS,
Wesleyan Assurance Society,
David Maxwell,
PayPoint,
Umeco,
moneysupermarket.com,
Telecity Group,
Greggs,
The Restaurant Group,
Stobart Group

We are delighted to announce that
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Tuesday, October 27, 2009 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Business,
Environment,
Media,
Technology
| Tags: links,
Twitter,
climate change,
TED,
robots,
photography

This month, the Grant Thornton team has been reading about robots with smiling faces, documenting climate change using time-lapse photography and ‘tweeting’ for a taxi home…
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Wednesday, September 16, 2009 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Business,
Environment,
Media,
Technology
| Tags: entrepreneurs,
links,
Cirque du Soleil,
Innovation,
music

From the reef-like nature of innovation and new ideas, to innovation lessons from the Cirque du Soleil, here’s what the Grant Thornton Innovation team has been reading about this week…
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Tuesday, September 08, 2009 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Business,
Environment,
Media,
Technology
| Tags: government,
James Caan,
iawards,
BIS,
innovation awards

Is your organisation British and inventive? Does its innovative products, practices and projects deserve wider recognition? Then the
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Thursday, September 03, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business
| Tags: R&D, Tax, innovation, investment, government, funding
The Grant Thornton team is aware of revised HMRC thinking in the following areas:
Production costs
Perhaps the most significant of changes relates to HMRC’s stance on costs which relate to the production of products and services for supply to customers. HMRC’s new approach appears to prohibit claims for any production costs where there is the prospect of producing goods or services to customers, even if as part of that production the company is seeking technological advancement through the resolution of technological uncertainty. This is understood to exclude claims in respect of prototypes and ‘first of classes’ that are subsequently sold for use rather than scrapped.
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Monday, August 17, 2009 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories:
Business,
Technology
| Tags: innovation,
statistics,
global,
infographic,
chart,
patents,
World Patent Report

Who is leading the world in innovation right now? Using the latest data from the
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Wednesday, July 15, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business
Graham Kennedy of
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Tuesday, July 14, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business
| Tags: innovation,
technology,
emerging markets,
asia
Robert Atkinson, founder of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, and Iqbal Quadir, founder of MIT’s Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship, debate where innovation is moving in the 21st century in this week’s Mckinsey ‘Debate zone’.
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Thursday, June 25, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business,
Healthcare
| Tags: health,
john wilden,
global healthcare
“Global Healthcare Futures (GHF) is a UK company that is the brain child of John Wilden, a former specialist and consultant neurosurgeon. GHF is developing and promoting software products for “Time to Cure” and “Cost to Cure” Common Diseases based on the advances of molecular biology and other technologies which will underpin the fast looming world of curative global healthcare, thereby ushering in a new age of diminishing healthcare costs across the developed and developing world”.
Dr Tim Evans, Chairman of Global Health Futures
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Wednesday, June 24, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories:
Business
| Tags: investment,
bonds

Will King, founder of grooming product firm, King of Shaves, is asking his customers to buy £5m in bonds to finance expansion of the brand. It’s a move believed to be the first instance of a company turning directly to its customers to raise investment funds.
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