Festival brings together businesses to talk innovation

Lancashire businesses from a variety sectors came together to discuss the importance of innovation.

This year's Lancashire Innovation Festival, the third organised and the first to be held in-person, was hosted by Brockholes.

The event was supported by LEP Innovation Board and Lancashire County Council, with the aim of looking to show how Lancashire businesses engage with innovation and how they implement it.

There were four sessions throughout the day discussing how best to achieve innovation and the struggles faced by many businesses in implementing it.

The debates were also streamed live via YouTube for those who couldn't make it in person.

Proceedings opened with pre-recorded video from Professor Graham Baldwin, chair of the LEP Innovation Board. He welcomed everyone to the day and looked back on the previous year's work, including the new Innovate Lancashire website, and the Innovation Challenge competition held in the summer.

The day continued with breakfast and a roundtable session on money with Mark Gibbons and Ian Dixon from Access to Finance Lancashire, who hosted the discussion on the different forms a business can raise to invest in their innovation. The panel was made of Mark Hall, an accountant, Zain Javed from Mitigate Cyber, and Paul White, a local entrepreneur.

The second session featured as hosts, Alan Reid and Pete McOnie of AMRC.

They invited local manufacturers to talk about how they went about it and what benefit it had brought to each business. The conversation started with an explanation of what manufacturing was and tried to define where innovation came into it. Those on the panel also shared with the room support they had received both from organisations but also from others in their field.

After lunch it was a chance to chat about the environment and energy – very relevant topics now for many businesses facing high prices.

Led by Becky Toal from Crowberry Consulting, the panel talked about how they had innovated and were still doing – in that innovation never stands still and will always need work on it.

After the roundtable finished, the audience had the chance to chat with the panel and look at the products they had brought it to see how they worked.

The final session, hosted by Rory Southworth, community manager at Fraser House in Lancaster, was an opportunity to catch up with the Innovation Challenge winners and find out how they were progressing with their ideas.

There were then updates with the Innovation Champions including debate on Social Innovation – what defines it and how does it happen.

Maya Ellis, Lancashire County Council, said: "The day brought together an exciting range of companies and support partners from across Lancashire to collaborate and share ideas.

"You could tell from the lively discussions that innovation is high on the agenda for business here, and that we have all the elements to be a world-class innovation county."