Advanced manufacturing is more about how you think than what you make. Advanced manufacturing businesses are independent but integrated, globally active but conscious of their local environments. Most of all, they innovate – and with that innovation comes risk that must be managed.

In the fast-moving automotive sector, it’s no longer a question of whether business can afford to innovate. The new question is, how long can they afford not to?

There’s nothing like a crisis to focus the mind, and in the world of architecture the COVID-19 pandemic is throwing a sharp spotlight on architectural innovation. The impact of social distancing is a much broader topic than simply shuffling the furniture around inside a building and throwing up a few cautionary signs. Around the world, we’re starting to realise that keeping each other at arm’s length is an obstacle to be faced in every walk of life.

With 2030 presenting a hard deadline for mitigating the worst, most irreversible effects of global climate change, the clock is most definitely ticking. Given that the UK’s built environment is responsible for an estimated 45% of the country’s total carbon emissions on its own, it makes sense to focus a significant amount of attention, investment and innovation there.

All over the world, entire sectors are finding and refining ways to “green up their act” without sacrificing competitiveness or growth. The balance isn’t always an easy one to strike, but climate change is likely to go down as the defining challenge of our times so the pressure is only building.

It would be difficult to overstate the challenges facing the UK’s pivotal construction industry right now. With a declining skills base, a workforce that’s aging out of the sector, the still-uncertain Brexit fallout and now a global pandemic to deal with, it’s no surprise that construction’s suffering its worst slump in memory - but as one of the most innovative sectors in the UK there's still hope for the future.

When we talk about medtech, a lot of the time we put the emphasis on the glamorous cutting edge where innovation borders on science fiction. However, as COVID-19 has demonstrated on a global scale, innovation can be every bit as much about expanding capacity under pressure, broadening definitions along with horizons

With the UK’s economy on a pilot light until further notice, it’s more important than ever that you take every funding opportunity seriously. The trouble is, when the going’s uncertain, many of the traditional lenders and investors you’d be looking at start getting cold feet. With the money drying up all around, businesses are looking beyond their normal financing comfort zones – and it turns out there’s still quite a lot to find out there.

A key lesson of the Covid-19 pandemic is that teleconferencing, remote presence and real-time information sharing are key support structures for navigating a social lockdown – and nowhere is this need more urgently felt than in the medical sector.