Google says it wants to keep the London technology ball rolling

You never know what human ingenuity will dream up next. Zorbing is the sport of strapping yourself into a giant "hamster ball" and rolling down a hill or across a lake. Companies in the UK are answering consumer demand for the new adrenaline rush, and Zorbing firms are popping up all over the place.

One company, Rollmania, with centres near Enfield, north London, and around the country, is a great example of how to turn a niche idea into a profitable business. The company uses online advertising, and 90% of its bookings come from the internet. That's no surprise as searches for "Zorbing" have increased 250% in the UK over the past year. The company, which sent 452 people Zorbing last year and looks set for a 50% increase this year, has almost doubled in size to 15 employees in a little over a year.

Rollmania is a great example of innovation in action. Innovation makes our economies stronger. It drives growth, creates jobs and enables new opportunities and, here in the UK, it is a key priority for economic recovery. The Government last year launched a programme to turn East London into a technology hub aimed at rivalling Silicon Valley.

This may seem like a narrow endeavour in the face of broader economic problems but it's actually a smart move with great potential. I applaud it and the Government is right to place it at the heart of the strategy for growth.

Innovative companies, particularly small technology start-ups, can have a huge impact on a nation's economy. More than half of the new jobs created in the UK between 2002 and 2008 were created by just 6% of the country's fastest-growing companies, according to a study by the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts. This shows that support for innovative companies is crucial to a country's prosperity.

Google is trying to help, too. We are investing in the East London technology project, and will be working with two inspirational organisations, TechHub and Seedcamp, which are already leading lights in London's start-up community.

The internet is a tremendous opportunity for innovative UK companies. The UK internet economy was worth £100 billion in 2009, according to a Boston Consulting Group study. That's roughly 7.2% of gross domestic product, making the internet a larger factor in the UK economy than construction, mining, tourism, agriculture and a number of other industries. And the internet is expected to be worth 10% of UK GDP in 2015.

That's probably a conservative estimate. Who knows what new ideas and innovations will emerge from UK start-ups in the coming years? I think the East London technology hub, combined with this country's growing culture of online entrepreneurship and venture capital investment, could yield great results. The history of innovation shows that where there are groups of people or companies exchanging information, exploring new ideas and new ways of doing things, innovation becomes possible.

Google emerged from this kind of creative background. Its founders figured out a better way to find and organise information on the internet because they were part of an innovative community. Theirs was a process made possible by a network of ideas and opportunities.

And from that idea - the spark that created a new type of search engine - a whole new economy was born. Yes, Google is a successful business, but that success has been shared by many. Online, any company can build its brand. Today, there are more than one million advertisers using Google AdWords, the majority of which are small and medium-sized businesses.

Online advertising has had a positive impact that extends beyond these businesses. Internet users have access to free search engines and email because of these ads. These services are useful and economically beneficial. Last year, advertising-supported services across the European Union were worth about 100 billion (£90 billion) to consumers, according to a study conducted by McKinsey. This value is expected to grow to 190billion by 2015.