Festival of Innovation set for return - The Malvern Observer

Festival of Innovation set for return

Malvern Editorial 24th Sep, 2014 Updated: 20th Oct, 2016   0

THE NATIONALLY acclaimed Malvern Festival of Innovation returns next week for its third successive year.

The event, which launches on Wednesday (October 1), continues to grow and this year will span four days at Malvern Theatres and includes parallel events around the town with a range of guest speakers.

Organised by Malvern-based Key IQ in association with Malvern Hills District Council and supported by numerous sponsors, the festival is free to attend.

This year’s festival focuses on engineering and manufacturing, cyber security, and the Business of Innovating explored, with keynote speakers descending on Malvern from around the UK.




Dr David Bott, former director of Innovation Programmes at the Technology Strategy Board and currently non-executive chairman of Oxford Biomaterials, will open the Festival on Wednesday with a talk titled ‘The Epidemiology of Innovation’.

Professor John Perkins, the chief scientific advisor for the UK Government’s Department for Business Innovation and Skills, will also talk on the opening day about the importance of innovation to the UK’s economy.


Day one will also include talks from local firms Malvern Instruments and Mazak and Gordon Hollingworth –  a former engineering apprentice at RSRE Malvern who is now Director of Software Engineering at Raspberry Pi in Cambridge.

The Cyber Security Innovation Showcase on Thursday (October 2) underlines the importance of this industry to the region. There will also be presentations from Lockheed Martin, the Civil Aviation Authority and the University of Swansea will highlight cyber security issues in defence, aviation and medical devices.

Friday (October 3) focuses on the broader topic of innovating in business. Visitors will hear from Lee Strafford, the entrepreneur who founded Plusnet which was sold to BT for £67m.

Later in the day local entrepreneurs will have an opportunity to pitch their own ideas to a panel of experts and the audience to gain constructive feedback and maybe even some investment.

And the festival closes on Saturday (October 4) with a specially themed Family Day including guest presentations from Dragons’ Den winner Mark Champkins and broadcaster Quentin Cooper from BBC Radio’s Material World.

In addition, Aston Martin are coming to Malvern College during the Festival to give an audiovisual presentation about the development and testing of their sports cars.

Dr Adrian Burden, the founder of the Malvern Festival of Innovation, said: “The festival is a really good opportunity for people interested in business and technology innovation from around the region to come together and hear from world experts in their field.”

Visit www.festival-innovation.com for more information.

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