http://www.novaridesign.com/blog/index.php Copyright 2012, Novari Limited: design & innovation Novari Limited: design & innovation en-US SPHPBLOG 0.4.8 http://www.novaridesign.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry080814-005814 Hello and Welcome to Partis Reputo.

In case you wondered, Partis Reputo is Latin for ’shared thinking’ and rather than be precious about the ideas we have, we thought we’d share some with you.

The web is rife with ideas. Quite a lot of them pretty trite stuff. Here in Partis Reputo, we’ll endeavor to siphon out the junk . You’ll find a mixture of some of our own work and writing, new developments worth reviewing and latest industry news in design and innovation. We’ll include links too, so that you can make up your own mind on who is worth bookmarking.

Your comments are welcome of course. We’d like to create a few controversies of our own that you can contribute to. There are a number of subscribers to our RSS feeds and emails, so your posting will reach an audience of hundreds of influential people. That isn’t an invitation to use the blog for blatant promotional purposes (we’ll be moderating those) but we’re happy for you to answer back!

Go innovate!
]]> Editorial http://www.novaridesign.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry080814-005814 Novari Limited: design & innovation Wed, 13 Aug 2008 22:58:14 GMT http://www.novaridesign.com/blog/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080814-005814 http://www.novaridesign.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry080814-010224
http://www.smarta.com/Default.aspx

Smarta is designed for business entrepreneurs who want to join a support network in getting their ideas out there. The service launches in November 2008, but in the meantime there are some useful testimonials and a blog.

With the economy in such dire straights and with analysts suggesting that the worse is yet to come, this is a brave move from the Brightstation Foundation. Dan Wagner is a serial entrepreneur. I met him a long while ago in his MAID and Dialog days when he had an office near the Cutty Sark in London. Here, its Shaa Wasmund, one of his partners, who has developed this social enterprise. Quite where it’s heading is unclear, but at the very least Wagner et al will be able to trawl the website for attractive new start-ups ripe for investment through the Brightstation venture fund.

We’ll keep an eye on this one.
]]> Companies to watch http://www.novaridesign.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry080814-010224 Novari Limited: design & innovation Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:02:24 GMT http://www.novaridesign.com/blog/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080814-010224 http://www.novaridesign.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry080815-004550 In a recent review of inspirational innovation stories, Novari scanned a wealth of innovation resources from government agencies, NGOs, publishers and consultancies finding little to inspire business leaders.

If you were considering 'buying' innovation in or encouraging your own team to be a little more innovative, you'd find it hard to pull together a PowerPoint presentation of any length from the case studies, charts or images available from public and private online sources. When we went searching for role models of innovation, once again Creative Britain has been shown to be surely lacking.

The Design Council has, in it's defence, a fair sample of case studies. Design Weekregularly announces creatively-led innovations through it's daily news service. Government departments and other agencies (NESTA,the Technology Strategy Board , the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills {DIUS} and the NESTA project site 'Innovation Index' all talk abstractly about innovation but, as the Innovation Index blog discusses, just what we mean by innovation is open to wide interpretation.

What's missing about almost all of these websites is any sense of either (a) the business imperative of creativity and innovation or (b) in what shape or form do we find true innovation? At one end of the scale, the Design Council and Design Week sites talk up the role of design and creativity with latest project news whilst at the other almost every Government department claims to know something about innovation.Somewhere in the middle, we're missing some pretty compelling stories of innovation in action in the UK economy.

Now, I'm definitely not suggesting for one minute that we can summarize innovation and design in easy-to-chew packages, but consider for a moment one episode of Dragon's Den. Like it or loathe it, it gives us a very revealing snapshot of a world where the world of design and creativity meets the world of business. Entrepreneur wanna-be's present innovations that are often ill-informed, romantic or plainly desperate whilst the Dragon's do some simple maths on just how viable the proposition is.

Where are the successful ones now? Do they feature on NESTA's site? How many great products and services utilising funds from the Technology Strategy Board are lauded on Government websites in the same vain as those to be found on the BBC Dragon's Den site?

This could be one of the ambitions of the Smarta initiative (see below), but in the meantime, I'd like to hear from you on innovations you've been involved with that better demonstrate creative and innovative Britain. Not another packaging makeover that you'll see in Design Week. Not another prosaic games-industry so-called 'innovation' from NESTA that really won't see the light of day. No. Not for us. We want real innovations of the kind that James Dyson would build in the Far East.

Tell us about your innovations. And we'll keep you posted on some of ours.

]]> Editorial http://www.novaridesign.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry080815-004550 Novari Limited: design & innovation Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:45:50 GMT http://www.novaridesign.com/blog/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080815-004550