Somerset Businesses are being urged to exploit digital opportunities with customers and other businesses to develop new products and services.

This was the key message to the 100 business delegates attending the Tomorrow’s World Today’s Innovation event organised by Somerset County Council at Dillington House on 28 September.

In his keynote address, Professor John Bessant, Chair of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Exeter University, said, “Businesses should take the stance that not all the smart guys work for us. Customers and other businesses hold the key to your own innovation. Indeed it could be that ideas and help comes from the most unrelated and unusual sources.”

Delegates also stressed the importance of superfast broadband, with Gavin Eddy, from work hub Forward Space, saying: “Quite simply the businesses we work with won’t be able to remain competitive without it.”

The Tomorrow’s World Today’s Innovation event was organised and funded by a variety of partners including Somerset County Council, University of Plymouth, IBM, South West One, Connecting Somerset and the Open Innovation Project partnership, which is a North West Europe Interreg IV funded initiative.

“Companies such as Proctor & Gamble and Lego have completely overhauled how they work to actively engage customers in creating new products. New internet based companies such as Threadless.com have emerged that base their entire business model on interaction with customers and external designers. The key message being that you don’t have to own all the resources to be innovative.”

In his address, County Councillor David Hall, Cabinet Member for Economic Development, said, “Somerset County Council is committed to ensuring that businesses are in a position to make the most of new technologies and opportunities to innovate through collaboration with others. Our plan to bring superfast broadband to the county by 2015, is the single most important thing we are doing to drive economic growth in Somerset at the current time.”

Delegate John Pitt from Morph Sites said, “Today’s event shows that businesses need to have their fingers on the pulse. Some of the technologies talked about today such as augmented reality, collaborative working, cloud computing and quick response tags are coming to the world very soon in a big way and it is vital that we are ready.”