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Innovation Group

New Innovation Group Launching Soon

May 24, 2011
 
While we had made good progress, we have now decided to park the Innovation Group for the moment to help the Islington Chamber of Commerce push ahead with the Camden & Islington business awards on October 27th.  We will pick it back up when the Chamber is ready.  To find out more about the 2011 Business Awards, visit the ICoC site here.

This is a group being launched jointly by Shireen Smith of Azrights and the Islington Chamber of Commerce.  The objective of the group is to foster inventions and innovation, by bringing entrepreneurial businesses and inventors together to act as a catalyst for new ideas.

Through bi-monthly guest presentations giving insights into starting up or growing a successful business or taking new products to market, the group will become a forum where like-minded individuals will be able to meet and share views.   Members and guests will have an opportunity to learn about particular facets of innovation, and intellectual property rights, and get to know one another informally.  The emphasis is on helping businesses find out what they need to do to get to market, and bring them together to speed up the process.

The ethos of the Innovation group is:

  • While one person may be able to come up with an innovative business model, invariably to put that idea into practice requires a whole range of skills and experience.
  • Different businesses can collaborate to realize a project in a shorter time, and to a better standard, to the mutual benefit of them both.
  • Practices which are normal in one line of business may seem revolutionary in another. If professionals from different fields meet in the right context there is a chance they will discover a better or novel way of doing business.

By networking informally over food and drink once the guest presentations have been delivered, members will discover opportunities for collaboration.  Exchanging ideas could lead to interesting new relationships and opportunities for participants to progress their business plans.

We’re excited to have the possibility of sponsorship from London Metropolitan University whose digital media business incubator programme has supported 70 early stage SMEs over the past 4 years with work space, business advice, education and mentoring. Their tech startup venue, the Accelerator is the planned location for the group’s inaugural meeting on September 6th.

Jeremy Phillips of IPKat fame is to deliver a presentation on the Intellectual Property Rights, and we are in talks with a well known inventor to share his experience of successfully taking his invention to market.  Keep an eye on this blog for further updates.

The meeting will be open to all, although ICOC members will have preferential rates.  Bookings will open in mid June. If you want to be notified when the link becomes available drop us a line here.  There are a maximum of 50 places, and it will be first come, first served.