International Festival of Business – Four ways to ‘Make it Britain’

On the 25^th June 2014, Stephen Blatchford attended the ‘Make it Britain’ conference at the International Festival of Business in Liverpool. The event was organised by EEF and focussed on the ‘Four ways to Make it Britain’.

Stephen was joined by chairmen and directors from Numatic, Siemens and Hymid, whose talks covered managing quality in supply chains, supplier excellence and building flexibility into manufacturing operations.  Stephen’s presentation focussed on innovation and how properly applied it can transform the performance of a business.  He believes that successful innovation is a key driver of business performance and also of providing solutions for patients that really make a difference.  His presentation used the development of the élan foot as a case study for the conference.

The five stages of the Blatchford New Product Development process are discovery, conception, evolution, realisation and application, which are controlled by a monthly New Product Development (NPD) meeting chaired by the CEO.

Stephen pointed out that any successful new development is a combination of the marketing aspects of knowing what will sell in the market, what will bring benefit to customers and the technical aspects of actually being able to develop a product that does this.  The five stage process that the company uses attempts to ensure that all of these factors are taken into account.

The IFB event has over 100 events over 61 days, running from the 9^th June to the end of July 2014.