The second half of the two week Leicestershire Innovation Festival gets underway today.
The festival highlights the big achievements the city and county have made and the opportunities available in its thriving technology, design, creative and research sectors.
The festival launched last Monday with a packed event at Space Park in Leicester, and runs until Friday, February 25 th .
Events include the fourth annual LeicestershireLive Innovation Awards, taking place at the King Power Stadium on Thursday, February 24 – tickets are available here – as well as the University of Leicester’s regular Innovation Friday as well as a host of events targeted at SMEs.
Jennifer Thomas is the FSB development manager representing 4,500 members in Leicestershire, Rutland and Northamptonshire, and is among those supporting the fortnight.
She said one key aspect of Innovation was improving and evolving business products, services and processes to ensure individual businesses, and the UK economy, remained competitive and productive.
She said: “No matter how successful or how long they’ve been running, SMEs are constantly needing to innovate in order to remain competitive, meet customer and regulatory needs, and tackle big issues such as the pandemic.
“But they would probably look at that innovation activity as being problem solving, upgrading or growing.
“A business owner might think that they would need to invent something to be an innovator but, in reality, it’s about staying ahead of the curve and taking on new ideas - not necessarily coming up with them yourself.
“Pre-Covid research showed a productivity benefit attached to micro-businesses (organisations with nine employees or fewer) which increase their adoption of digital technologies.
“Moving into technology such as cloud-based accounting services or HR software applications can be game-changing.
“To an extent, the pandemic has forced businesses to go digital in ways which could have otherwise taken years.
“However, this now needs to be sustained if it was purely undertaken as a reactionary measure in response to the crisis.”
