Background Information

Excalibur (UK) Ltd was formerly the Innovation Services Division of the Barnsley Business and Innovation Centre - one of the largest and most effective innovations centres in Europe. This division itself was formed in 1991 to take the message of the importance of innovation and continuous new product and service development to the wider business community.

The division utilised the highly effective Sword Innovation courses to train managers in creativity and innovation skills in an “action learning” format, which postulates that the best way to learn anything is to “do it for real”. Using this approach the Division rapidly established a nationwide reputation with a large variety of companies and also with numerous Business Links and other business support organisations.

Excalibur (UK) Ltd inherited this reputation and today is recognised as a key UK provider of innovation programmes and new product/service development process consultancy.

These innovation programs are now available to Hong Kong companies through Excalibur International, which runs these highly successful innovation programmes in partnership with HKPC, the SAR’s premier business support organization. Excalibur International has over the last few years achieved growing success in helping companies within the SAR innovate successfully. As one satisfied HK customer put it: “Excalibur’s innovation program had a significant impact on our teams understanding of innovation and John helped us see that everyone can be innovative. We created in a very short time actionable new ideas and implemented new processes to make innovation a permanent part of our corporate fabric. We are certain that this program is a critical element in us staying ahead of the game”

Charlie Lang Managing Partner Progress-U (Hong Kong) and author of
“The Groupness Factor"

A key part of Excalibur’s management approach is to “practice what you preach”, i.e. we also practice new product and service development. In the past few years we have successfully developed a number of new “products” including the Shield Programme for budding entrepreneurs, and innovation programmes aimed at “social enterprises”.