A couple of things have sparked of a train of thought recently.  David Rogers of NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) recently suggested “To steer a business through a recession you need to tackle financial management, sales and marketing and innovation.”

Then there was the Innovation In Business Survey from the National Office for Statistics that landed on my desk a while ago.  According to that, innovation means: “major changes aimed at enhancing a company’s position in the marketplace leading to improved services / processes (including investment in equipment, training & marketing)”.

I dutifully muddled my way through the survey wracking my brains to come up with something constructive in response to ” in the last 3 years, did your enterprise introduce new or significantly improved services”… er, no….  should we have done?  Panic was setting in and I jumped through the rest of it frantically ticking “N/A” like a coward.

Finding myself at the end of the questionnaire so quickly was worrying.  What have we been doing with ourselves for the last 3 years not to be able to consider anything we’ve done as innovative?   Do they mean innovation in delivery of service to client, or do they mean innovation in design?  What about keeping abreast of innovation in technology.  What about innovative changes to regulations?

Looking at technological innovation for Architects, I find that the architectural press, particularly Building Design, are a fairly good way of keeping on top of the latest in software and hardware innovation, though they don’t usually tell me anything that I haven’t already heard about from the younger (hipper, cooler) members of our team.

Innovation in building regulations? Well Rob Smith, our Associate and font-of-all-building-regs-knowledge seems to have a good handle on things and uses the Planning Portal to ensure we are kept fully up to date.

In the hope of shedding some light on what innovation means in terms of our working methods, I had a look at the members area of the RIBA website.  I wasn’t really sure what I was after – would I stumble across The RIBA Guide to Being Innovative?  Strangely enough, such a publication doesn’t exist, and the nagging voice in my head was getting louder. How can we be innovative when the RIBA Plan of Work has to be so rigidly defined, we have to follow regulations set by the government and our Professional Indemnity Insurers are forever watching over us to ensure that we are minimising risk?

Innovation in design?  Innovation in construction?  Where does this end?!

I stopped panicking and looked at our working methods. I realised that the things that we consider to be everyday good practice could be considered radical and fresh.

  • We don’t stick to a rigid way of working (except when we have to in order to satisfy legal and professional regulations).
  • We understand the importance of sustainability and encourage our clients to take a green approach wherever possible.
  • We are highly skilled at working in collaboration with artists, communities and user groups.
  • We have won awards for our buildings, including awards for innovation.
  • We use the latest software and hardware where commercially viable.
  • As a practice we talk to each another, we talk to other practices, we’re interested in news and opinion, we learn something new every day.
  • We have embraced Web 2.0 and social media and use online tools as a method of communication.

Need I go on?

OK, so you won’t see us on Dragon’s Den flogging something that one of the Directors invented in his garden shed, but innovation?  Check!

Lorna Parsons, Practice Manager