The Brisbane Innovation Scorecard which was launched today finds that Brisbane is a thriving centre of innovation:

Brisbane emerges from this survey as a world-class enabler of business innovation, with an innovation footprint which is comparable nationally. The majority of Brisbane firms – across all industry sectors and sizes – are actively innovating, with 65 per cent applying at least one innovation in the past three years.

It contains some great case studies of innovative businesses and organisations with operations in Brisbane, including the Eidos Institute, Rio Tinto and Restaurant Two, which may have revealed a little too much about its innovative methods:

The restaurant places a great emphasis on training and briefing its wait staff to deliver that exceptional customer experience. Further to developing a training program, systems also have been developed for dealing with confrontational situations while every customer’s likes and dislikes are recorded in a comprehensive database. This information is used to brief wait staff before each sitting, so that a customer’s desires are anticipated – from their preferred drink to their favourite meal. If a customer is new, they are ‘Googled’.

How about some good old-fashioned conversation to learn what people like and what they’re interested in? Googling your customers is probably smart business practice – you’ll quickly figure out who the cashed up ones deserving special attention are – but it does sound kind of creepy.