Welcome to the inaugural Local Innovation section of HBR.

Innovation has been featured annually in HBR for many years.

With so much progress and so much passion for innovation, the Hunter Business Review is committing to a regular innovation section. And what better place to start than with a report on an event that celebrated its tenth anniversary and one that made its debut.

 

Happy anniversary!

The Hunter Innovation Festival celebrated ten years in May. Over the years the event has continuously adapted and grown in order to best serve an ever-changing innovation landscape. Isn’t that what innovators do? The 2017 festival continued to break records and push boundaries and saw the youngest ever winner of the Smart Ideas competition pitch like a professional.

 

Year Six Lambton Public School student Annabelle Mahoney won the judges votes with her simple and effective idea to combat the region’s obesity dilemma; paint staircases inside and outside of buildings with inspiring colours and patterns, and with motivational phrases. That will make more people take the stairs. Give people an experience and a reason to change their behaviours and they will.

 

The Hunter is bursting with new and vital collaborations, an expanding innovation ecosystem, new incubators and coworking spaces. Continued diversification of ideas, communities and resources are vital if this trend is to continue.

The word ‘Exponential’ will soon become as common to community and business survival as the words Creativity and Innovation. Gordon Moore, the Moore behind Moore’s Law, has warned that it has become irrelevant. Exponential is now the term used to describe the increasingly rapid rate of change. The trajectory is upward!

 

Innovation for innovation sake is futile. At the centre of all innovation should be a human-centred need, a problem seeking a solution. The human connections made at the Hunter Innovation Festival are the reason why planning for HIF18 has already begun.