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Innovation through collaboration

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29 Oct, 2014

Innovation begins by unifying disciplines. Crucial to fostering truly innovative culture is knowledge-sharing. To isolate business units is to miss the opportunity to learn and include the experiences of each discipline. In a business, the takeaways of the management team aren’t so far removed from the knowledge the technology team needs to work better. Collaborate within your own organisation, share ideas and work as a single informed entity.

Adopt a culture of cross-functional collaboration. No organisation, and certainly no person within the organisation, operates in isolation. The idea of collaboration is based the on the premise that a higher number of minds increases the likelihood of more innovative solutions. Every employee, contractor, manager or leader has their individual bank of ideas and learnings, and the more an organisation promotes connecting these minds, the greater its business competency. As is often said, organisations don’t innovate, people do.

Innovation structures adopted by an organisation must be sustainable across time and space and allow people within the organisation to evolve within it. The structure will shape the products or services an organisation provides, so like business strategies that can be deliberate or emergent, it is important to strive to understand the reason for innovation.

To introduce innovation principles into the regular business flow, consider group power. Gather a group of employees and break them down into small teams. Discuss ideas that directly give insight into processes that impede efficiency. Pare down to the processes that are most disrupting and think of actionable alternatives.

Innovation is challenging. Introducing a new idea within an organisation and bringing it to the market requires courage. The biggest challenges lay within companies, causing some of the most creative ideas to be abandoned prematurely in the absence of encouragement. For companies to see their innovative ideas reach fruition, it is crucial to recognise the people that embody its ideas. It is necessary to share stories of people that push the limits. Since innovation is born through people, it is important to create a culture that rewards breakthrough ideas.

 

Source: Financial Express

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ANPR cameras used in two day police blitz – UK

  • News

24 Oct, 2014

The extraordinary number of foreign criminals hiding in Britain was dramatically revealed yesterday after police arrested more than 700 suspects travelling on our roads in just 48 hours.

As a row raged over a report which showed the £1billion-a-year failure of successive governments to guard Britain’s borders, police launched the biggest-ever blitz on overseas offenders, rounding up 1,687 suspects in two days.

Using number plate recognition technology to spot foreign-registered vehicles potentially associated with criminal activity, police stopped 2,304 cars, arresting 729 immigrants.

They include gangsters and thugs wanted in their own countries for crimes such as human trafficking, robbery, fraud, drug smuggling, assault and domestic abuse.

The automatic number plate recognition cameras also identified a 51-year-old Polish man in Smethwick, West Midlands, who is suspected of a £11,500 fraud. The week-long crackdown – involving 43 forces in England and Wales – has seen raids carried out targeting foreign criminals across the UK.

 

Source: Daily Mail

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Harnessing the power within

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21 Oct, 2014

How many of us have invited consultants to join us in discussions regarding planning for the future and what the next ‘big thing’ is going to be? I would guess quite a few. We imagine market ‘experts’ can provide us with guidance as to market reactions, fluctuations and expectations. Don’t get me wrong, some input from consultants is valuable but is this the best source of information or are there more active, responsive channels to the inner workings of the market?

A number of years ago we received an email from one of our partners regarding an upgrade we had completed on one of our ANPR cameras. The email was to congratulate is on our work and stated that if the partner could have chosen updates, the ones we had provided would match them exactly. How perfectly our ambition met our partner’s needs.

My colleague approached me a while ago and bemoaned a purchase he had made citing a simple change which would make his life far easier and, he was convinced, would make the lives of others far easier as well (no product name drops here). I listened to his explanation and agreed it seemed to be an improvement and, I would expect, easier to provide than the end result.

I think you can guess where I am going from here. The best sources of information regarding product development, market fluctuations, expectations and reaction are your audiences. Whether this be your workforce, your customers, your business next door or your networks, everyone has an opinion and their own needs which need to be met. Not all of these are going to be the most brilliant of ideas but tiny umbrellas for phones aside, listening to your audiences is without doubt the best source of information and invention available to you.

MAV have listened to the thoughts and opinions of their varying audiences for a number of years and have been rewarded with growth, loyalty and trust. We are all customers, many of us have need for that which we sell or know a lot of people that do. Customers know what improvements will best meet their needs and whilst cost is always a factor, innovation and inspiration are only a stride away from information.

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ANPR cameras support bus lane enforcement – UK

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  • News

20 Oct, 2014

CAMERAS used in a trial on two of Hull’s busiest roads caught over 10,000 motorists using bus lanes illegally in just two weeks.

In the trial in June, two automatic number-plate recognition cameras filmed 9,762 drivers in the bus lane on Anlaby Road. Another 532 motorists were caught on Beverley Road.

In the report which is being discussed on Wednesday, Councillor Mancey said the trial confirmed the extent of abuse, and enforcement should help bus operators improve services to time, encouraging more people onto public transport, as well reducing congestion where buses are having to hold up traffic and road collisions due to illegal usage of bus lanes.

But he said cameras, which are already in other major cities – and could go up in different sites round Hull, had to be clearly signed and publicised to ensure motorists were aware of the cameras and subsequent penalties in place.

Councillor Martin Mancey said “I am confident many law-abiding motorists will welcome measures to reduce the abuse carried out by that minority of selfish motorists who currently drive in bus lanes during the periods of operation.”

ANPR cameras are used as a tool to support the efficiency of public transport and expedient transport for all commuters. The majority of road users are currently being penalised by the actions of the minority but with cameras in place throughout Yorkshire, that scale is tipping toward the law abiding motorist.

Bus Lane Enforcement ANPR cameras

 

 

Source information – Yorkshire Post

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Innovate to differentiate

  • Blog

20 Oct, 2014

What do we mean by innovate? Folding a napkin three times to fit under a wonky table leg? Using pieces of a space suit to plug an air leakage in a space shuttle ‘a la’ Apollo 13?

People throw around the word innovative because it’s a buzzword, it’s an update of the ‘cutting edge’ of the 90’s. There are a great many businesses in the world that label themselves as innovative without really grasping what it means. There is a definition, of course: “Innovation is about finding a new way of doing something. It can be viewed as the application of better solutions that meet new requirements, in-articulated needs, or existing market needs.”

At MAV innovation is a philosophy. It is an unwritten policy that is embedded into the core of the business at every level and our innovation is all about making technology meet a new and specific need of our customers. Not technology for technology’s sake – pure and simple we design and deliver what’s needed where it didn’t previously exist by understanding what is possible.

In our opinion words can never capture what only actions prove. At MAV we provide ANPR cameras that are truly innovative. They meet the specific needs of our customers and form part of their solution to not only satisfy expectations but normally surpass them. We are the outsourced R&D team for our customers and we take that responsibility seriously.

Examples of innovation are not always bleeding edge technology. We have made products for clients that morph multiple systems into one; we change the shape of products to match the form required; we add connectivity; we increase performance; we lower power consumption – and we do that because our customers let us know they want it so we deliver it.

Recent examples of innovation have been a hybrid analog, IP and HD camera, borne out of a customer’s connectivity goals and a massively powerful illuminator for high speed night time image capture. These solution were achieved through collaboration with the customer and innovation in design. MAV were able to design and build unique solutions to unique customer problems rapidly.

We believe that finding out what a customer needs is the starting point. Meeting those needs through the provision of bespoke design is always an option we consider rather than trying to convince a customer to compromise and take something standard.

We think this form of innovation is one of the reasons why MAV have attracted so many loyal customers who eagerly seek our assistance in making their business better – we innovate to differentiate? So, what do you want?.