By some accounts, the UK is becoming a less innovative home for industry. A recent DTI study shows that British companies invest less on equipment, research and development than their international competitors and they are falling further behind.

But if the Queen's Awards for Innovation are anything to go by, not all is lost.

The number of winning companies totals 37, down five from an exceptional 2001, but the highest for 11 years before that.

Awards have been made to companies covering many aspects of life, from cleaning (BOC's vacuum division) to packaging (Flexipol Packaging and Beardow & Adams) and healthcare (Elekta Oncology Systems, BioInteractions and Cambridge Neurotechnology).

Big players in British industry may be less creative, but the Queen's Awards demonstrate that the offices and factories of small enterprises provide fertile ground for innovation.

Aside from engineering and technology companies in the category, many of the most inventive organisations in the winning line up have fewer than 100 employees and one, HoldFast Level Crossings, has just two. Its crossings are made from recycled rubber tyres.

Bridges and viaducts are usually constructed from masonry. And three companies have worked together to perfect a unique method of reinforcing these and similar structures. Cintec International (design and manufacture), Gifford & Partners (consulting engineers), and Rockfield Software (software predicting bridge behaviour) have each won awards for their Archtec technology.

The European Commmission requires that all trunk road bridges be capable of carrying vehicles of 40 tonnes. Many older UK bridges could not meet that standard. The Archtec system not only strengthens the bridges by inserting stainless steel reinforcing bars, points, but also preserves their appearance.

Architecture of a different kind secured success for a 15-strong company from West Sussex. Architectural Plants grows and sells an unusual range of garden plants. This "passion for peculiar plants", grew out of a realisation that many British gardens look decidedly unappealing in winter.

Its solution was a collection of unconventional plants, including evergreen species that look tropical or have spiked or large leaves, or foliage with distinctive shapes.

Such plants have generally proved difficult to propagate in the UK climate, but technology used by the company, such as micropropagation, allows it to produce large numbers of plants that can thrive all year round.

Those who like to communicate with their foreign foliage could employ another innovation winner, Eurotalk. Its novel approach to language learning focuses on everyday phrases and words.

Eurotalk's interactive CD-rom and DVD-rom discs uses quizzes and games to let students hear and compare their voices with a variety of native speakers, and then mimic those speakers.

Its teaching method is based on a template that uses keywords and phrases common to all languages, allowing it to add 12 new languages a year.

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