In response to the WM Local Industrial Strategy’s call to create an innovation culture, our friends and partners at the Innovation Alliance for the West Midlands have started an innovation tracker to highlight the great things that are already being done by firms all over the West Midlands. Sometimes companies are given the impression that they have to be working with a professor in a lab coat, developing a ground-breaking product that the world has never seen before in order to say they’re ‘innovative’. And while some companies may be doing this, usually the word innovation is used when it might be clearer to say ‘we’re doing something we’ve not done before’. It might not be new to the world, but it makes a product or a service better than it used to be, and these incremental changes might end up being just as important to the company that makes them, and the people that use them. The tracker showcases stories from companies creating products as diverse as freeze-dried fruit snacks, systems for contactless donations at church, and creating a 3D immersive museum experience. If you’d like them to showcase the new products and services you’re creating, you can contact us them at IAWM@blackcountryconsortium.co.uk and/or download and fill out the case study template here. SWM supports the Innovation Alliance by running the Innovative Low Carbon Working Group, so we’d be especially pleased to see some low carbon case studies sent across!
