Vincent Kane launches the WQC Innovation Award at the Miskin Manor

Vincent Kane (pictured) is such a good speaker.  No surprise really considering spent many years hosting the television programme Wales Today.  Yesterday morning he was our host for a breakfast meeting at the Miskin Manor for the launch of the Wales Quality Centre Innovation Award 2009.  Wales Quality Centre say “Innovation deserves a much higher profile in Wales and much wider publicity than it currently receives” and it is difficult to disagree with them. 

 Last year the award attracted 41 entries and the eventual winner was ARUP who developed an innovative system to control flooding in the Cardiff drainage area.  Also singled out for praise were South Wales Forgemasters and the Office of National Statistics.

This innovation initiative is to be commended but we feel that the Wales Quality Centre could be more innovative themselves in the management of this programme.  Here are our WelshWired Tips for making award-centered-programmes more effective.

Welsh Wired Tips

1 – Get partners to promote the programme in advance of the launch event.  In WQC’s case they could have made more use of Business Support Wales who mention last year’s award but there’s no promotion for the 2009 programme.  They could also try other innovation centered organizations such as Cardiff University’s Innovation Network.

2 – Make use of social networks such as Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.  Wales Quality Centre are noticeably absent from these.  Listings on the three sites mentioned are completely free – you just need to appoint someone to do it.  And do it fast – the Twitter ID “wqc” is still available at the time of writing but can’t imagine it will be for long.

3 – Web Badges.  Create a web badge for the event and get the entrants to display it on their website.  Also create a slightly modified web badge for the winners, runners up and short-listers and get them to display on their website.  The entrants are looking to get positive publicity out of their entry and so its in their interest to do this.  Ensure that the web badge links back to a suitable landing page on the WQC site with information about the award and links to other relevant sites.  A quick search of the websites of last year’s top three shows no reference to the award – a lost publicity opportunity for the WQC.

4 – Put the details of last year’s winners and runners up on the WQC website.  Currently this is available only as a PDF which means that it lacks visual impact and none of the content gets picked up by search engines thereby making it more difficult to find.  The actual PDF is good – demonstrating that the WQC know their stuff – it’s just a matter of translating fundamental business skills into the WelshWired context.

After the launch presentation we were given an opportunity to ask questions.  I pointed out the fact that the launch presentation had made reference to innovative web companies (Google, Twitter, YouTube, E-Bay etc) all of whom are exemplars of business model innovation.  I asked, why then is there not a reference to business model innovation in the WQC.  To which they replied “maybe we could talk about that”.  I hope we can and perhaps add a WelshWired dimension to next year’s awards.

If you’d like to enter this competition further details can be found on the WQC Innovation Award page.