In a nation so rich with creative thinking, we’ve picked six outstanding businesses doing something very different. But who are they?
Necessity may be the mother of invention, making innovation its precocious child. Disruptive, game-changing, challengers, call them what you will, our finalists in the Innovative Business of the Year category have found ways to improve working and personal lives in some way.
Each one has achieved a ‘first’ in one way, shape or form, no matter how seemingly small that tweak to the status quo may have been.
And more than that, each one of the six finalists in this RBS-sponsored category has started to flower and grow in a way that would make a parent proud, if it weren’t for the fact they were looking to steal their dinner!
Smarter
Turn your kettle on from your mobile phone with Wi-Fi enabled kitchen applications from this Internet-of-Things start-up. Other products include a ‘grind and brew’ coffee machine with intuitive features which learn your daily routine and adapts.
Eyetease
Mobile digital advertising specialist dubbed “the future of mobile advertising”. The start-up has developed Europe’s first taxi-top advertising proposition; the iTaxitop, and the world’s first ads-for-access high speed in-cab Wi-Fi system for taxis.
Purple Bricks
The world’s first 24/7 estate agency which enables customers to arrange viewings, put their house on the market, book a local property expert and make an offer on a property from any device, anywhere in the world, at any time. It has already taken 61% of the national online housing market.
Dataloop
A new innovation for the IT infrastructure monitoring space which helps businesses run cloud services at scale. It uses unique monitoring technology which instantly alerts clients to issues happening across thousands of servers and applications behind the scenes.
Ebsford Environmental
Provides advanced, bespoke solutions for aquatic restoration and vegetation management. Its range of services include the eradication of invasive species – in particular Japanese knotweed, large scale de-silting, and flood defence.
CommuterClub
A peer-to-peer lender for public transport tickets, CommuterClub enables UK commuters to access the discounts of an annual season ticket but paid over monthly instalments instead; saving commuters £500 on average. Customers also receive “extra perks” such as discounts for Uber.
