Guest Author: Drew Benvie (@drewb), UK CEO, Hotwire and 33 Digital

Autumn in the UK is conference season. In fact you could probably apply the 80:20 rule to this time of year. I would say that 80% of the interesting conferences in digital, technology and innovation circles happen in 20% of the calendar year!

When it comes to choosing which ones to go to, I like practical events where you can pick up new skills and meet people you normally only speak to on social media. But I love inspiring events more, and two events that stood out for me on the innovation and inspiration front recently were PSFK’s London conference which took place in September and the inaugural Meaning Conference which took place in Brighton on 1stOctober.

PSFK has an eclectic mix of creative themes, with speakers ranging from artists to inventors, and agency technologists to product people. One speaker stood out for me though. Tamara Giltsoff delivered a talk on how big firms should look to startups for innovative business models. She referred to the surge in interest around incubator and work hub initiatives, and in particular referenced her involvement in Telefonica’s Wayra initiative as a mentor, as an example of this. I’m also a Wayra mentor so I got her perspective straight away.

Then at Meaning, the focus for the entire conference was how business models need to change in order for us to build a sustainable environment in the future.

One of the speakers was David Heiatt, whose story was my favourite example innovation in the big / small context. David is a veteran of the clothing industry, having founded and then sold the Howies brand before setting up his current venture Hiut Denhim. In Hiut, we can see a small company innovating in order to stand out and to make a difference.

Hiut jeans are high quality, but the innovation in the product itself was the most interesting part of David’s story. Each jean is given to a member of a crowd-sourced group whose job is to wear the jeans in, a process which is a far more environmentally-friendly alternative to the artificial stone-washing process employed by many jeans manufacturers. The person who wears in the jeans then receives a 20% cut when the garment sells. All this is trackable through a unique URL relating to the jean, which can also be tagged by the jeans’ owners over time, who can then add relevant stories.

I have spent much of the last five years setting up, building and expanding a specialist division of an established, global business. Or creating something small and innovation-led as part of something bigger.

I have experienced first-hand the need to create different ways of working, different methods of learning and communication, and new business models in order to attract the best people… To create a product that gets talked about and a company that can scale and grow in these austere times.

And I’m experiencing how both worlds can come together for the greater good.

In short, reflecting on the Wayra model, I think we will see a great deal more imitation in the future, of fostering innovation through new business models and bringing big and small together. Doing this will create new opportunities for all parties and I truly believe – having experienced it first hand – that it is the beginning of something really huge in the way we will work in the future.