Where Innovation Comes From, Nick makes the case for manufacturing close to the market

Reacting to Chancellor Gordon Brown's pre-Budget Report in mid-December 2005, Sir Digby Jones, CBI Director-General said, ‘If we don't invest more in innovation and skills, as well as stimulate the success of small business, frankly we will get left behind by economies that have much lower costs'.

Despite the gloom and doom-mongering, British manufactured goods can compete. They are frequently superior, and often less expensive if you take into account all the hidden costs.

Few would argue the benefits of buying global products such as Tee-shirts from the Far East or Apple's iPOD designed in the West and made at low cost in China. But the rationale for some outsourcing is hard to fathom.

Paying for your poison

Recently it emerged that supermarkets are importing apples from New Zealand, re-exporting them to South Africa for coating with a stay-fresh chemical, then re-importing them back to the UK. If the apples weren't travelling so far and spending so long en route - up to a year before we eat them - they might not need the stay-fresh coating and we wouldn't be paying to eat another unnecessary chemical.

If you buy imported or multi-national window systems you could be paying a lot more than you should.

To innovate, you need to be hands on. You need to see how your product appears in the market; and to have a deep understanding of how and where it is used. To get that, you need to listen to your customers, be they fabricators, installers or commercial specifiers. You need their feedback.

But it's not enough to rely on second hand experience. You ought to make, install and use your own product in the market you are targeting, so you really feel what it can or can't do. I suppose what I'm saying is, you need to eat, sleep and breathe your product with a passion. So you are aware before anybody else of improvements that would make it more attractive to British eyes, alterations that would make it more user-friendly, innovations that might take it onto a different plane altogether.

Innovation through experience

It was only by assembling and installing Synseal's original Shield conservatory system - complete with sides and gutters - that we realised the overlap in roof and gutter components. By looking hard at the complete building we were able to replace several components with one item, which saved effort, time and money, and looked significantly better.

While assembling low pitch conservatories, looking at installations and talking to installers, we were also able to come up with the innovatory Global 600 system.

The British market

British homes are built in imperial measures, yet other low pitch conservatory roofs are based on 500 mm centres, which just don't look right when matching up to 600 mm centres. Why weren't other roofs designed for the British housing stock? Designing products in a closed off laboratory, far from the action,0far from the country the products end up in, is bound to limit your vision and stunt your growth.

Outsourcing should be a last resort because you risk losing control. JIT (just in time) frequently becomes JTL (just too late). To protect yourself, you need huge stocks at the ready, but stock and storage space costs you money.

Foreign manufacturers don't know - can't know - what the British customer likes or wants or needs, unless they make the effort to find out. But adapting a European or World window system to suit UK tastes adds significantly to costs and operational complexity, and - they persuade themselves - it must be easier and cheaper to persuade the UK to accept what they are offering. But like cars, window systems designed on a European platform for seventeen different countries do not make the UK homeowner's heart beat faster.

Remember all those clunky tilt-and-turn windows European systems companies wanted you to use instead of traditional British casements designed for British housing? Many houses now struggle to sell at the full price because they just don't look right with inappropriate Germanic tilt- and-turns.

So many small British window systems companies have been bought out; there are few independents left. Remarkably, they seem to be the ones that are doing well. Why? Perhaps it has something to do with proximity. Innovation grows out of need and opportunities for improvement. Proximity to the market, closeness to customers and a real understanding of problems and needs: are the roots of innovation.

You can't force the market to accept innovations that don't meet real UK needs. ‘We have ways of making you buy', might sound good in Head Office, wherever that is, but it doesn't quite cut it in the market.