A word from Ian Callum

Founder Chairman | IDEA Birmingham // Design Director | Jaguar

Innovation and design have been at the heart of our endeavours as a region for well over 300 years. Our combined efforts have changed the day-to-day quality of life we all enjoy. Now it's time to tell our unique story and draw on previous inspiration and design excellence to develop a distinctive platform for growth and wealth creation.

IDEA Birmingham is a vehicle for us to do this and as Design Director, Jaguar, and our Founder Chairman, I am proud to represent one of our region's most renowned brands. New York's MoMA proudly exhibits the Jaguar E-Type Roadster and everyone will have come into contact with at least one or more of the many iconic brands produced here - whether it's Acme Whistles, AGA Rangemaster cookers, Aston Martin, JCB, Land Rover, MG, the original Mini, Morgan Motor Cars, Triumph Motorcycles, Pashley cycles, Brooks England saddles or pottery, furniture, jewellery, foods or confectionery.

We continue to produce a collection of the exceptional and everyday, combining 'beauty and usefulness' with an ease that belies their underlying ingenuity. Today we have a vibrant community of some of the world's most celebrated designers.

Naturally, I am proud of my own design team and our ongoing achievements as well as those of Gerry McGovern and colleagues at Land Rover. Our wealth of design talent extends to internationally renowned designers such as Marek Reichman at Aston Martin, Emma Bridgewater in The Potteries, our jewellery and craft-based designer-makers and a blossoming creative community.

"We have a vibrant community of some of the world's most celebrated designers."

How we manage this talent to deliver vital wealth creation and much needed jobs is our challenge both as businesses and as a region. This is requiring new approaches to competitiveness - design-driven innovation, networked collaborations - highlighted in leading thinking from research centres and think tanks in the UK and internationally.

Since we started talking through these ideas our business leaders have voiced a strong desire for a celebration of our on-going design excellence and achievement through the proposed IDEA Birmingham Expo and Awards to form a high profile element of our IDEA Birmingham Leaders Network as this emerging competitiveness agenda gathers momentum.

More recently we have seen gathering momentum for the formation of a multi-disciplinary Innovation Hub, led by IDEA Birmingham, anchored by our universities as key players in our emerging knowledge economy, mapping and identifying the region's competencies and specialisations to drive forward new business growth opportunities.

I hope you will join us by committing your energy, enthusiasm and some of your precious resources to our design-led agenda and vision to deliver much needed results for our City and the people of our region.