Thought space

16th September, 2021

Space Elevator: Solving the Problem with Expensive Space Travel

Getting people or satellites into orbit around the Earth is both expensive, an estimate of at least £30,000/kg...

02nd September, 2021

Our jargon-busting innovation glossary – demystifying 20 key words, phrases and acronyms

New to innovation? Or struggling to keep up with the terms you hear others use? Like any technical discipline or...

12th August, 2021

Biomimicry: Innovation Inspiration from Nature

Inspiration can come from anywhere. If you have a design problem to solve, it’s often worth investigating...

22nd July, 2021

Why Clarkson’s Farm Is a Great Example for All Innovators

What can one of the most ancient industries (circa 13,000 years old) in the world teach us about innovation? The...

06th July, 2021

4 important ways to set your innovation team up for success

I wrote recently about the need for a corporate innovation team dedicated to disruptive or transformational...

17th June, 2021

Why your innovation team is no longer innovating effectively

If you’re already investing in innovation to grow your core business, why is disruptive or transformational...

13th May, 2021

No more gimmicks – 7 insights for creating successful IoT products

American inventor Thomas A. Edison once said: “To get a great idea, come up with lots of...

29th April, 2021

Where is the smart innovation in the medical & healthcare sector?

As business gradually emerges from the constraints caused by the pandemic, we are seeing a significant surge...

15th April, 2021

The power of mobile phone innovation for personal safety

Sometimes we forget to utilise the innovative technologies that already exist and that are at our fingertips. In...

22nd March, 2021

Getting over the ROI hurdle – 5 powerful reasons to invest in IoT when there isn’t short-term return

Connected Internet of Things (IoT) products can help to enable more sustainable outcomes by measuring use, driving...

18th March, 2021

How your customer wins with IoT – the 6C’s of Connected Product Innovation

Many innovation leaders I talk with are clear on the value of connected products and the Internet of Things (IoT)...

23rd February, 2021

Innovation in the Construction Industry: thoughts from a self-builder

I am currently planning my own house build. I have the plot and outline planning permission granted. I...

02nd February, 2021

Sustainability & Christmas packaging

Christmas seems like a long time ago, right? So why am I writing about it now, at the end of...

28th January, 2021

Who are winners in Healthcare?

Whilst many businesses have found the past year challenging, the healthcare industry has seen an increase in...

18th December, 2020

Don’t read this now. Come back later

2020 has been an extraordinary year with extreme disruption, pivots, challenges, and opportunities. As we...

15th December, 2020

Product Design and Innovation in a Time of Plague

Working as a product design engineer I get to enjoy blending creativity, technology, and empathy. I personally enjoy...

01st December, 2020

Do female leaders excel?

Last week, Maia Sandu, a former World Bank economist, won Moldova's presidential runoff vote. The election was...

03rd November, 2020

Will COVID-19 drive innovation in vaccine development?

At university, I studied a module entitled ‘Chemical Pharmacology’, the science of the development of...

07th October, 2020

A golden opportunity to stop selling off the family silver

Imagine how different our lives would be today if Michael Faraday had not built the first electrical generator...

02nd October, 2020

How to prosper through persistent disruption

2020 has brought with it incredible levels of business disruption: COVID-19, Brexit, technology advances, climate...

10th September, 2020

4 big innovation questions

This article was been adapted from the question and answer discussion that followed our July 1st webinar...

20th August, 2020

How the COVID economic collapse will save the planet

On Monday 20th April something happened for the first time in history. Oil companies had started having to pay...

11th August, 2020

Do you know your (innovation) mountain lion?

I spent about a year living in the Bay Area of California, a short drive from a few wonderful national...

04th August, 2020

On uncertainty, being wrong and taking the next right step

Watching the daily news briefings from both sides of the Atlantic it is interesting to observe how often leaders can...

02nd July, 2020

Child’s Play: What we learnt from Lockdown Lego

Alan and Edwina both have young kids, and throughout this lockdown, there have been some quality Lego...

18th June, 2020

Front End Innovation – 5 thought starters from an insights masterclass

On this day last year, I was in beautiful Florence chairing an innovation masterclass as part of the Front End...

09th June, 2020

What a Difference a Year Makes

What a year to start a new enterprise! In this article, we reflect on some of the big global events that have...

13th May, 2020

Why I chose Ignite Exponential and why you should too.

So, before we start I really should introduce myself. My name is Martin Miller, an Industrial Design Leader with 20...

29th April, 2020

Why we should start talking about scenarios for innovation – and not trying to extrapolate out our future

I was listening to a recent podcast from the usually excellent BBC podcast "More or Less" about...

07th April, 2020

Create to Innovate

We are super excited about the new home for IEX that we are starting to build; there are some big personalities and...

25th March, 2020

We’re Here for You Through the Disruption

We set up Ignite Exponential to help companies to grow sustainably in increasingly uncertain times. At the founding,...

25th March, 2020

How to Innovate in Scarcity

I’ve worked in innovation for more than twenty years using a broad range of innovation tools, processes and...

10th March, 2020

Are You Frozen?

Watching Frozen 2 at the weekend reminded me that I have a confession to make. No, it wasn’t the pretence of...

11th February, 2020

Innovation Fitness

Those that know me will be aware that when I’m not helping companies innovate, I love an outdoor...

13th January, 2020

What Happens in Vegas?

I just escaped two full-on days at CES2020. Despite my FOMO (fear of missing out), there will be much I...

13th December, 2019

How to make better business growth decisions

In the UK we have just had a general election. It has been a contentious battle with politics being disrupted as...

28th November, 2019

How I Did (Not) Create the Raspberry Pi

Ten years ago I was working for a company which developed low power multimedia processors. My role was to design and...

18th November, 2019

Genetic Sequencing: Medical and Life Insurance

This is the third blog by Peter in his series ‘Disruptive Tech’. ...

29th October, 2019

Harvest Innovation - Changes in Agriculture

On 6th November, the NEC in Birmingham will open its doors to the Farm...

22nd October, 2019

What is Intuitive Design?

Companies often desire for a product or service to be ‘intuitive to use’ or incorporate...

07th October, 2019

Artificial Intelligence, Patents and Coca-Cola – Is It Always the Real Thing?

Coca-Cola’s recipe is one of the best kept trade secrets in the world. Developed by a pharmacist, it has been...

19th September, 2019

Disruption Summit Europe 2019: Playing with Lego

‘Radical innovation is becoming normal’ was a recurring theme at this...

12th September, 2019

Lab Grown: Meat to meet consumer demand

In this blog, Peter Debenham gives his opinion on the future of the meat industry, and its disruptive lab-grown...

04th September, 2019

Ideas Are Not Enough

People often see idea creation as the most important aspect of innovation. We hear people lament, “if only I...

22nd August, 2019

No Job Description Here. Create Your Own Future.

The classic quote goes: “hard skills get you the interview; soft skills get you the...

14th August, 2019

How Electric Cars Will Change the World

Imagine this front page heading in your newspaper tomorrow morning: “Electric car sales reach 25%: All...

30th July, 2019

Tomorrow's World: A.I. and Natural Language Speech Processing

In this blog series, resident IEX Senior Consultant, Peter Debenham, shares his predictions for how certain...

12th July, 2019

Why innovation partnerships should be more like a physio and less like a doctor.

Several years ago I had needed to seek the advice of UK doctors and physiotherapists to try to treat a long-standing...

25th June, 2019

Innovation learnings from a designer

The Front End Innovation (FEI) Europe conference was held last week in parallel with the larger ISPIM...

21st June, 2019

A new way forward, proposing the IEX way

This is the final blog of our 5 part Ignite Innovation blog series from the Head of Ignite Exponential, Alan...

19th June, 2019

An observation about innovation collaborations…

This is the fourth blog of our 5 part Ignite Innovation blog series from the Head of Ignite Exponential, Alan...

12th June, 2019

How your process (might) get in the way of strategic innovation

This is the third blog of our 5 part ‘Ignite Innovation’ blog series from the Head of Ignite...

06th June, 2019

Why is repeatable innovation so hard… (and what you can do about it)

This is the second blog of our 5 part "Ignite Innovation" series from the Head of Ignite Exponential,...

04th June, 2019

What can we learn about innovation from water lilies?

This is the first blog of our 5 part "Ignite Innovation" series from the Head of Ignite Exponential,...

30th May, 2019

Toronto's Innovation Explosion

I led a workshop in Toronto last week exploring the need for strategic innovation and some...

20th May, 2019

5 things that inspired us at Boston Innovation Festival 2019

This year’s FEI Boston was one of the...

14th May, 2019

Why Plextek created Ignite Exponential

Customers have been asking us to solve some of the hardest engineering problems for nearly thirty years. In...