The winner of a £20,000 innovation prize for revolutionising magazine publishing has admitted to being stunned with the decision.

Jon Barrett, founder of Purelabs, based in Lenham, said after clinching the 2009 Kent Innovation Challenge: "I’m chuffed, stunned and my heart is racing."

The verdict was announced at the Kent 2020 Vision business show at Detling County Showground. Mr Barrett told hundreds of guests at a gala dinner that the money would help him cut development time from a year to three months.

The business, which was helped by the University of Kent and Canterbury Enterprise Hub, beat 70 hopefuls to the top prize and had to survive a Dragons Den-style grilling by a panel of Kent business experts.

They were impressed by Mr Barrett’s big idea Intelligent Flatplan, said to be the world’s first internet-based magazine management solution.

After receiving his prize, Mr Barrett said: "We’re going to get a Kent-developed product out to market faster than we could possibly have ever hoped. It’s designed in Kent, manufactured in Kent, supplied from Kent but now supplied worldwide."

He added: "It’s helping micro, small, medium and some large publishing companies lower their costs, reduce their hours, speed their time to market and boost their profits. Our system is helping this vital industry to survive and thrive in these troubled times and beyond."

It offers magazine and newspaper publishers the opportunity to replace paper, spreadsheet or DTP-based flatplans with a web-based planning system that enables every user of the publication team to see the same view, wherever they are in the world and irrespective of whether they are using PCs or Apple Macs.

Paul Walsh, chairman of the Kent Innovation Challenge judging panel said: "Jon and the Purelabs team have identified a real gap in the market and devised an excellent solution that will help publishers around the world. "