BusinessLab

BusinessLab was founded in 1998 as one of Scotland's leading change management research boutiques. The company designs and develops products and processes to help people manage change within their organisations. From the outset the company have focussed on carrying out 'action' research on organisational change and helping prepare for the integration of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The learning derived from the research is used to develop new planning and strategy tools and processes for licensing by third parties. This involves carrying out coordinated investigations into exemplary business models, strategies, technologies, and structured programmes - used by leading organisations all over the world - to help partners and clients learn from these and apply best practice to their own organisations. The business model was inspired by that of various leading, US research institutions. These included:

Houston Advanced Research Centre (HARC) - under the leadership of Skip Porter HARC created an inspirational 'neutral' physical environment in which academic and industrialists could feel comfortable. HARC was formed and run by commercially minded entrepreneurs who spoke the language of business.

MIT Media Lab - under Nicholas Negroponte created a series of exciting IT - related themes on the future and then attracted a consortia of leading IT corporations to support the exploration of these. MediaLab used innovative multimedia communication to show the research work done by academic teams including 'demos', conferences, seminars and websites. They had well structured sponsorship packages, an excellent sales team and good PR. They believed passionately in good design from the architecture of their buildings to their promotional material.

The University of Texas (UT) at Austin - UT became a focus for business, government and academic collaboration in the State of Texas in the 1980's. UT was one of the driving forces behind the team that won the bid to attract MCC (microelectronics and computer technology corporation) to Austin. The latter was America's first ever for-profit research consortium. The attraction of MCC in the early 80's is regarded as a milestone in the development of Austin as a high-tech centre. The motto was 'collaboration is everything'.

Further information is provided on their web site at http://www.businesslab.co.uk/

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