There are more than 600,000 new businesses set to launch this year, according to StartUp Britain, many of whom will look to embrace new technology in order to create that competitive advantage and deliver the growth and revenue they crave.
The Internet of Everything (IoE) is one market where we are seeing a plethora of new innovation and that offers huge potential for British business. Cisco forecasts that the IoE could create $19 trillion over the next decade, with 50 billion things connected to the network by 2020. Furthermore, a recently launched report revealed that today’s startup community is estimated to make over £100 billion from the IoE by the same year – this revenue potential stretches across verticals with huge opportunity in areas such as retail, manufacturing, energy, transport and healthcare.
With this in mind and embracing the innovation that IoE can offer, we have recently announced the finalists of the Cisco 2015 British Innovation Gateway (BIG) Awards. Each of the unique companies are breaking traditional business boundaries and utilising technology that can truly make an impact in the business community and beyond. From Asset Mapping, that is using IoE technology to help companies visualise the location and health of building assets in real-time, to EMD Ltd, which is utilising IoE technology to harvest energy from the environment through small, low power sensors, the opportunities are vast.
The BIG programme is committed to supporting British innovation with past successes including uMotif, an app that collects data to help monitor and maintain healthcare and retail technology pioneer, SnapFashion, which has just secured its second round of funding. There is, therefore, no denying the potential of IoE in fuelling innovation in the UK and the opportunity to enable the UK economy to further establish itself as the pioneer of creativity and the backbone of Europe business development.
The finalists in the BIG Awards have taken that first step, but it is not just the role of the start-up or entrepreneurs to ensure this innovation is maintained. It is the responsibility of the government, industry bodies, big corporations and influential executives to maintain the focus on British innovation and provide the support, capital, advice and leadership that will enable businesses, like our finalists to develop, into the Uber’s and Airbnb’s that will define the new digital generation.
The six finalists for this year’s Cisco British Innovation Gateway Awards will compete for a $220,000 prize package at the final event set to take place at the National Theatre on 22nd October 2015
For more information on the six finalists please follow this link – http://www.thebigawards.co.uk/
