A bus trip organised by Bradford University School of Management has provided ideas which will help 15 business leaders innovate in their own organisations.

The School’s Innovation Club provided an ‘ideas bus’ which visited several local business to enable the passengers to gain inspiration.

Passengers spent the day sharing business ideas, seeing examples of innovation in practice and learning how they can apply the success to their businesses.

The trip was designed to enable bosses to see how three top local companies have turned their ideas into business results. Businesses represented on the bus included Walker Morris, Foster’s Bakery, Beaumont Robinson, Lhasa and Northern Lights PR along with ten academics and Bradford MBA students.

Organised by Professor Christos Kalantaridis, who leads the Innovation Club, the bus visited the Skipton site of health firm Systagenix (formerly Johnson and Johnson), WebAnywhere in Keighley, a fast growing education software business and the Bradford off-site manufacturing arm of NG Bailey, the Ilkley-based building services company.

The business bosses were challenged to tackle a challenge faced by each of the companies visited, including how to prioritise good ideas, quality control and building an innovation pipeline.

WebAnyWhere managing director Sean Gilligan said: “The ideas and experience from the group was amazing. I looked at the people on that bus and reckon I would have to pay £10,000 to £20,000 get that level of advice and input. Two people have specific expertise that they have offered to me as follow up. I am so grateful to the management school for organising this.”

Prof Kalantaridis said: “Innovative businesses want solutions now and since joining the School of Management in January I have been looking at how we can open up our resources to more businesses and link our research to their needs. One way we can do that is to bring business people together to learn from each other about how to make good ideas work and deliver results.”