Sustainable Innovation
Innovation and world-class research and development
The North West Business Leadership Team (NWBLT) regards innovation and sustainable development as being central to the region’s global competitiveness and its environmental and social well-being.
The North West’s ability to respond to these challenges is key to the realisation of NWBLT’s mission of “making the North West the UK’s most attractive region in which to live and work for generations to come”.
The region’s future competitiveness will be determined primarily by the creativity, agility and flexibility of its people and the region’s capacity for working with national and international partners in addressing new opportunities and challenges.
Drawing upon the expertise of its leading member companies and the region’s principal research-led universities, NWBLT seeks to enhance the North West’s innovative capacity through such means as:-
- Bringing together innovative and creative thinkers, from throughout the North West and elsewhere, for joint events and collaborative working.
- Providing appropriate confidential introductions for exceptional ideas, working through suitable innovation and knowledge networks.
- Offering a ‘sounding board’ or ‘critique’ for potentially major regional projects.
NWBLT is also committed, and has a leading role to play, in achieving the highest possible standards of corporate responsibility in relation to sustainable development. For example an in-depth research project carried out in 2007 concluded that NWBLT has a vital leadership role in relation to the North West’s sustainable development. Against a background of increasing evidence of climate change, and rising energy costs, our member companies are more strongly committed than ever to driving improvements in reducing energy consumption, waste generation and carbon emissions. NWBLT and its member companies are working closely with one another, and with Business in the Community, the CBI and the Northwest Regional Development Agency, to spread best practice throughout the North West in such areas as sustainable purchasing, employee engagement and product design.
NWBLT places sustainable development at the heart of all its activities, recognising not only the prime importance of the climate change threat but also the significant commercial benefits which can be realised by businesses which successfully address the sustainability issues.
