WMG has launched a new initiative, the Business Innovation Group (BIG), which will act as a channel to focus WMG’s business engagement activity and support organisations who are looking to transform for success in the digital economy.

The Business Innovation Group will engage and work with a wide range of business partners, from start-ups and SMEs, through WMG’s SME Team within IIPSI, to large organisations and policymakers. BIG is led by WMG's Business Transformation research group, but will draw on its access to cutting-edge research and expertise across all of WMG’s research areas to support organisational and economic transformation. Specifically, BIG will help organisations to adapt their products, services and operations to respond to the connected digital economy as well as assist organisations to evolve and implement new business and economic models as technology continues to transform society.

A key aspect of the initiative will be the BIG blog. Through the BIG blog, academics will engage with an international audience who are interested in how technology might impact on the business and economic landscape of the future. The blog site is intended to be collaborative and interactive. Academics, practitioners and researchers from across WMG, as well as project partners and experts from industry, will blog about their work, their thoughts and their experiences. The blog has been created to enable conversation and debate and, through collaboration, progress knowledge in business innovation research and practice. The blog will focus around the following themes:

• Business Transformation – helping existing organisations transform themselves into being dynamic, future-ready and sustainable and enabled by technology
• Making Society Better – showcasing how the latest technological developments, such as the Internet-of-Things, 3D printing, creative media, can transform society
• Collaborative Communities – Exploring how different communities doing different things can come together and collaborate through technology
• Marketplaces and New Economic Models – how new technology and information can become part of the economy to stimulate growth and new jobs and skills
• Creating New Businesses and New Business Models – encouraging and developing innovative organisations in the connected digital economy

The BIG blog will also provide a focus on Special Interest Groups (SIGs) which are areas of particular significance where WMG will draw together experts from a range of fields to provide valuable interdisciplinary collaboration. These SIGs currently include healthcare, internet-of-things and creative industries.

Professor Irene Ng, head of Service Systems Research, who leads the Business Innovation Group said:

I am very pleased that we are launching the Business Innovation Group at WMG, where our understanding of how technology and business interact, both in theory and practice, would enable us to work with partners who are striving to be competitive and future oriented. More importantly, we are a group that is not just able to advise on business innovation, but actually help organisations adapt their offerings by creating and prototyping new solutions alongside their need to transform their business, thereby assisting them on their innovation and transformation journey”

The BIG Blog is now available at www.businessinnovationgroup.org and the conversation will continue on social media using #BIGWMG. The blog has launched with a selection of introductory posts from experts across WMG including from:

• Professor Irene Ng - Helping Businesses Transform
• Professor Jan Godsell - BIG: Lifting the Bar Higher
• Dr Rebecca Cain - Why WMG started a Healthcare SIG
• Dr Xiao Ma - Internet-of-Things: Start of a New Era?
• Dr Ganna Pogrebna - Technology, Data and Decisions We Make
• Jonnie Turpie - A Compelling Case for Creative Industries

Keep checking back on the blog and on social media for future posts and discussion.

More info:

• More information about WMG’s Business Transformation Research is available at the WMG website
• More information about WMG’s work with business is available at WMG Working with Business
• WMG’s SME Programme is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund as part of the International Institute for Product and Service Innovation (IIPSI)
• The BIG blog was developed in partnership with local design company, The Magic Tractor: http://www.themagictractor.co.uk/