The North West Development Agency’s new Innovation Strategy, launched last week, aims to establish the North West as the Innovation Centre for the United Kingdom by the year 2020. While the strategy towards 2020 contains the four themes of Investing in Business and Ideas; Investing in People and Communities; Investing in Infrastructure and Investing in Image and Environment, the NWDA focuses primarily on the business sector from an innovative perspective.

In its new promotional CD and publication, ‘England’s North West | Innovation Strategy’ the NWDA features a case study about Brain Boxes’ emergence as a leading contender within the Serial Communications and Bluetooth™ wireless technology markets. It says;

Liverpool University graduates Pat and Eamonn Walsh have been driving their business forward with remarkable speed since 1984, in one of the most competitive and fastest changing business sectors imaginable – the provision of communications hardware and software for computer and telecommunications applications.

In order to stay ahead of the competition, Brainboxes gave itself a simple but extremely taxing target – to produce an entirely new product every month. It’s not surprising, then, that over 40 per cent of the company’s 50 strong workforce is given over completely to innovation and development.

Its products embrace driver design and hardware manufacture for on-board and mobile interface systems. They include Bluetooth solutions – the latest technology platform to power the connection between mobile phones and laptop computers. They need to stay ahead of the very latest developments in software platforms and operating systems in order to supply such an up to date range.

The company has achieved this and more, which is why you will find Brainboxes applications in situations such as Olympic scoreboards, West End shows, high street stores, as well as aeronautics, telecoms and defence situations.

There is no doubt as to where the future of the company lies. The ten graduates taken on each year are mostly supplied by the region’s universities. It is the influx of this talent that gives Brain Boxes the confidence to aspire to even greater achievements in innovative products in large volume niche markets.

Eamonn Walsh is in no doubt that he is located in the right region:

“Although high technology design is often geography-independent; what the North West does offer is a combination of excellent universities from which to recruit engineers, plus a fantastic quality of life in the region as a whole”, he said. “I passionately believe that the North West offers an exciting and rewarding future in the technological innovation to the brightest hardware and software engineers around.”

Further Information:

For more information about the NWDA’s Innovation Strategy for England’s North West, visit their website at http://www.nwda.co.uk, or call 01925 830022.