Pioneering Harwell-based company wins prestigious innovation award at the

Jul 21, 2010 at 11:27:09 AM by Simon Joyce - Tags: - Comments (0)

For 16 years, the Oxfordshire Business Awards have been recognising, rewarding and promoting the excellence of Oxfordshire-based companies.   Oxford Innovation is proud to once again be the sponsor of the very successful and popular Awards Dinner which took place on the evening of Friday 18 June 2010.  Paul Lowe, Chairman of the Awards Committee said "I am delighted to welcome Oxford Innovation back into the fold as one of the sponsors of the Oxfordshire Business Awards.  Oxford Innovation were, for many years, a sponsor of the Awards and it is great to have them back on board."

The Awards Dinner was held at the Four Pillars Hotel, Sandford on Thames, Oxford, and was attended by 450 people.  Finalists from companies across many sectors of business in Oxfordshire, enjoyed the dinner with many of Oxfordshire’s entrepreneurs and business leaders.

This year the Oxfordshire Business Awards Sponsors Committee has announced the creation of a new Sponsors Award.  The category will be known as the Oxfordshire Business Awards’ Lifetime Achievement Award, which will be presented to the individual(s) judged to have made an outstanding contribution to the county’s business scene. 

The 2010 winner of this special award was Sir Martin and Lady Audrey Wood, co-founders of Oxford Instruments.  Based on Sir Martin Wood’s invention of the world’s first superconducting magnet, Oxford Instruments was built and developed into a world-wide, high technology company.  Sir Martin and Lady Audrey have maintained their belief in innovation as key in driving growth and success in business, and have continually encouraged and supported new, science based companies to be successful through innovation.  Sir Martin and Lady Audrey Wood were the founders of Oxford Innovation, in 1995, who continue to build on their aim of building successful Oxfordshire businesses through innovation.
 
Oxford Innovation would like to congratulate a thoroughly deserving Sir Martin and Lady Audrey Wood for winning such a prestigious award.

Oxford Innovation would also like to congratulate another award winner, Bunnyfoot Ltd, who were announced as winners of the Oxford Brookes University and Business School Innovation Award.  Bunnyfoot are based at the Harwell Innovation Centre, on the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus.

Bunnyfoot  are usability specialists, founded in 1999, in the early days of usability, and were the first consultancy to offer professional accessibility services and the first to offer eyetracking as standard. They now also offer specialist eyetracking services to ad agencies and for market research. 

Bunnyfoot are continually developing their offering using state of the art technologies and pioneering innovations to develop their services for their clients.  It is this drive for applying innovative but applicable approaches to their service and products which made them stand out in a very strong field.

The award was presented to Bunnyfoot by Janet Beer, Vice Chancellor of Oxford Brookes Business School.  Director of Bunnyfoot, Dr. Jon Dodd, said of receiving the award “we are absolutely delighted to receive this Innovation award in recognition of advances we have made in usability and eyetracking testing.

Innovation is about trying something new, sometimes with uncertain outcomes, often with a degree of risk  – Oxford Innovation and the Harwell Innovation Centre has helped us control the risk (and anxiety!) of expansion as we have developed our business in new areas by providing flexible accommodation that has grown (and thankfully only once shrunk) with us. Without centres like this we may have never taken that initial risky step of starting the company in the first place”.