The future is bright for RedWave Labs thanks to the flexible support of Harwell Innovation Centre

RedWave Labs has been going from strength to strength since it moved into the Harwell Innovation Centre almost 13 years ago. The flexible and comprehensive support offered by Oxford Innovation Space, which manages the centre, has been a key factor in the company’s growth, enabling it to be more agile and connecting it into the wider community on the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus.

The Redwave team outside the office, showing the people behind the work and the strong team spirit that drives them

Founded in 2004 by Dr Dmitri Permogorov, RedWave Labs design and manufacture high quality custom electronics, specialising in photonics – the science of light waves and their generation, detection and manipulation.

Initially starting with a virtual office, RedWave Labs moved into its first physical office in the Harwell Innovation Centre in 2012 with two employees. Today. the company employs 20 staff and occupies eight rooms of different sizes in the centre, using a couple of the rooms as optic labs with equipment and blackout blinds. The ability to have self-enclosed separate rooms was essential for the team as they work with lasers.

Dmitri Permogorov, Redwave Labs’ founder and director speaking at our 25th anniversary celebration.

“We chose to take an office in the Harwell centre as it had the best mix of location, service and flexibility to grow,” explains Dr Nadia Permogorov, Director of RedWave Labs. “If you suddenly need an extra room its easy to scale up space. This flexibility has allowed us to be more agile as a business, expanding at short notice when a project has required it, without having to move or find space elsewhere.”

RedWave Labs was established to provide electronics and optics design, development and pilot production using the latest technological developments. The company now has an international customer base including clients in defence, aerospace and many academic institutions, varying in size from start-ups to large international corporations.

Nadia continues: “Our work is quite specialised but there is this openness and culture of collaboration in the centre. The centre team are always willing to facilitate your needs and they have introduced us to other relevant businesses. In the early days, they also used to answer phones for us and now they organise meeting rooms and catering for us. This support has allowed us to focus on delivering our core strengths and taken away a lot of little distractions.”

Continuing on its growth trajectory, RedWave Labs has moved into the commercial quantum space. Bringing outcomes of research projects to life, the company is bringing its first products in quantum technology to market.

The success of RedWave Labs highlights the value of innovation centres, which combine flexible, specialist space with expert in-house business support services.

For more information on Redwave Labs, please visit redwavelabs.com