Real progress
The moment chewing gum with a new flavor goes on sale, marketing talks about an innovation. Runnning shoes in a new color – again an innovation. The old pop song with new rhythm – innovation. Such undifferentiated inflationary use of the word, however, isn’t the only problem: awe-struck exaggeration is just as misleading. An innovation does not necessarily turn the world upside down: that’s not what’s involved. Even a slight change to a product or a process can mean real progress. The essential point is that the modified product or the modified process results in genuine added value.
Advancing developments of this kind were presented to the jury for the 2015 Innovation Award of the Supplier Industry for Precast Concrete Elements. The prize is awarded annually by FBF Betondienst GmbH and by the technical journal BFT International. The Innogain recess units from Jordahl won the award in competition with 15 other submissions.
In the current issue of the technical journal BFT International you will find an overview of all submissions for the 2015 Innovation Award (see p. 17 ff.). We would like to take this opportunity to thank all companies that competed for the award and that make such an important contribution to our industry with their research and development work. At the same time we want to encourage our readers to compete for the 2016 Innovation Award. Application forms are available this autumn, once again from FBF Betondienst.
