Crisis, opportunity and understanding innovation

Article by Paul Kirkham, researcher in the field of entrepreneurial creativity at Nottingham University Business School. “Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change.” So wrote Milton Friedman, economist and Nobel Prize winner, in his highly influential Capitalism and Freedom, first published more than 50 years ago. This is, of course, palpable …

Innovation, healthcare and hidden potential

Article by Simon Mosey, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Nottingham University Business School and Director of the Haydn Green Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The notion that more should be done with less is central to much of the debate that continues to swirl around the healthcare arena in general and the NHS in particular. …

How to create new ideas for business from the old

Article by Paul Kirkham, researcher in the field of entrepreneurial creativity at Nottingham University Business School. Successful businesses know what they’re doing, and they do it well; their products and services match the needs of their customers. But circumstances change, the market alters, new technologies appear; growing businesses face crucial challenges. At various times the …

China’s next age

Article by Paul Kirkham, researcher in the field of entrepreneurial creativity at Nottingham University Business School. The discoveries that emerged during the Age of Exploration finally put to rest the idea that all wisdom came from the “ancients”. The realisation that knowledge could be found elsewhere or even created – and therefore that progress could …

Growth 100: Business owners in the classroom

Research Associate, Jeannie Holstein, comments on the Growth 100 programme so far. The first cohort of the Growth 100 programme, delivered by The University of Nottingham’s Haydn Green Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and designed to give 100 Nottingham-based owners and directors the knowledge and skills to help them expand their businesses, has just graduated, and it seems an …

Invest to Lead with Nottinghamshire Healthcare

The Haydn Green Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is teaching the Ingenuity Process to 400 Nottinghamshire Healthcare staff as part of their Invest to Lead programme. Invest to Lead is designed in the interests of improving the quality of services, productivity and the patient/service user and carer experience. The programme is for anyone who is …

A Christmas message: Bacon and turkey not necessarily a recipe for continuing success

We are all familiar with the terms “hiding in plain sight” and “can’t see the wood for the trees”. Depending on one’s viewpoint, it is either fitting or unfortunate that both have become such tired tropes, because they are rather useful in discussing the merits of original thought. It was Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) …

Stifling creativity is self-defeating

By Paul Kirkham Writing to his rival and fellow polymath Robert Hooke in 1676, Isaac Newton famously remarked: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” What he meant, of course, was that his own achievements were made possible by those of his predecessors. Newton, though, wasn’t the first …

How to encourage innovation

By Simon Mosey, Director of the Haydn Green Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Cost-cutting might solve cash flow problems in the short-term, but it does nothing to encourage sustainable growth. To achieve this, companies need to encourage new ideas and develop them into successful innovations and this requires a willingness to do something differently. It’s …

Business schools should be wary of producing MBA ‘heroes’

By Paul Kirkham, Nottingham University Business School Producing MBA graduates who aim high and are committed to making a difference is a key function of any business school. What we must be increasingly careful to avoid, however, is the temptation to produce what we might call “heroes”. Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the …