Innovation | alchemyinnovation

ideas-online

27 Jan, 2012

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The NSW Department of Trade and Investment have developed a tool – Ideas Online.

You will be asked to complete 40 questions about your idea.

It is easy to get excited by the prospects of a new idea, so you need to be aware that your judgement might become distorted by your enthusiasm.

Your objective is to select the most accurate and honest response to each of the questions.

1. For each section your answers will be plotted on a spider graph to enable you to review and interpret your responses.

2. The answers will also be used to determine a number of diagnostic assessments that are presented as a series of graphs and text interpretations. These will help you to better understand the commercial feasibility of your idea, identify viable markets, anticipate risks, and find the right business model.

3. An ‘Overall Assessment Summary’ is produced after you complete all 40 questions. It includes a Commercial Feasibility Rating, an interpretation of this and a ‘Next Steps’ area which contains a number of suggestions, contacts and ideas for you to consider to help you pursue your business idea.

Whatever the likelihood of your idea succeeding in the marketplace, you should seek advice from a professional adviser or contact the NSW Innovation Advisory Service – the initial consultation is free if you are from New South Wales.

Enter Ideas Online

The NSW Innovation Advisory Service is funded by the NSW government to support small business and innovators develop their ideas. Go to www.ausinvent.com for more information or to book an appointment

How to grow your business with innovation

27 Jan, 2012

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To grow and survive in a competitive market is challenging. Businesses need to generate fresh ideas in order to build new markets.

Research indicates that most new ideas in business come from three sources:

the staff
company networks and
customers.

Think about your company’s situation. Do ideas get lost ideas in day-to-day operations? Does your company have a formal customer feedback process? Do staff ideas get lost in emails and staff meetings?

As well, management often do not know how to assess which ideas they should implement.

You need a System

To cost-effectively assess and commercialise ideas within your workplace you first require a system to capture those ideas.

You need to assess the ideas as to whether they are:

incremental (refer back to line management),
strategic (consider licensing out or in-house development) or
game-changing (spin-off).

Setting up an In-House Innovation Process

An in-house innovation process needs to be simple and easy to manage and incorporate these elements:

Determine the rules/strategic objective of an innovation program
Invite ideas (promote throughout the business networks and staff)
Collect ideas (simple one-page submission)
Assessment (1-10 using key company indicators)
Execute:

1. Pilot (small amount of resources and team to develop) 2. Venture (commit more resources and staff)

People Strategy

An innovation program is best for businesses that want to grow within a market. It is in effect, a people strategy.

So what makes staff want to participate? It might be time to work on the idea (Google does this), or an award-system( trophy – Atlassian has this), or a monetary incentive. One company offered any team that created an idea into a business would attract 25% of net profits of the new idea income for 2 years.

A company must protect itself however with a simple agreement that outlines rights –that states the business owns all the intellectual property created.

Fed Ex Days

One award-winning company in Australia, Atlassian has an excellent model called ‘Fed Ex’ days. Quarterly, staff get 24 hours to produce a one-page outline of their idea. At 3pm the next day they pitch their idea to senior management and staff. Their ideas are voted on. One or two ideas get the green light for piloting.

These days innovation is not a luxury. It is about continuous improvement and keeping your company relevant. It is also about retaining staff and creating a dynamic workplace.

Dan Liszka is the CEO of Alchemy Equities, a business innovation consultancy firm which specialises in delivering in-house innovation programs to small and medium enterprises, as well as equity capital raising. Alchemy is contracted by the state government to deliver the NSW Innovation Advisory Service and has recently conducted workshops nationally titled Capturing Innovation in the Workplace funded by the federal government’s Enterprise Connect program.

commercialisation-101

27 Jan, 2012

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Choose the best path to market.

Many companies we see at the NSW Innovation Advisory Service are uncertain about which route to market is best for their product or service. Much time and money is wasted pursing the wrong strategy.

A simple way to consider the best route to market is to ask the question:

Is it a sustaining technology or a game changer?

If sustaining (incremental improvement, better design, improved service function), that is a sustaining improvement – we suggest to our clients to resist going head-to-head with the incumbent competition, but rather to pursue a licensing strategy. This is where as the owner of the intellectual property (patent, brand, design, trademark), you license the technology to another company to manufacture, market and distribute.

If it is a game-changing opportunity(as VOIP was to telephony)– then we suggest the company pursue a spinoff or startup strategy – which generally means capital raising.

We have clients that have come to us after spending three years pursuing a licensing strategy, unsuccessfully for a game-changing technology. The product they were endeavoring to license – would have resulted in reduced sales to the target company’s existing product line. If a product being pitched for licensing, makes an existing product line redundant – a company is unlikely to license in the new technology.

Three years on, management should have asked that simple question – is the innovation an incremental improvement or a game-changer?

So what are the skills required to bring new products and services to market?

This is a major area our innovation consultants discuss with clients. We regularly have the technology specialist seeking advice on commercialisation of the product they have designed.

At the NSW Innovation Advisory Service, our first response is – who is your team to deliver this product to market? Successful commercialisation is about team. We suggest to technical types – that they team up (and share the equity) with an entrepreneur who understands how to bring something to market and sell. Days, weeks, years are lost with the wrong people attempting to bring products to market.

It is a major reason for the weakness in Australia’s track record in achieving successful commercialisation. We are great inventors – but not great innovators – that is, when you commercialise that invention.

Technical-types spend many hours getting their product 100% perfect. It’s in their DNA to do so. Budgets get overrun and timelines extended as a result. But when teamed up with an entrepreneur, who’s DNA is to get the deals and secure the cash-flow – a product is delivered to the market can be 75% ready. By setting to market early and remaining flexible, the team can incorporate customer and distributor feedback to fine-tune the product and can start generating the sales to keep the show on the road.

Understanding the market can save time

At the NSW Innovation Advisory Service, an innovation consultancy service, we often see teams who have assumed they know their market and have not assessed if the market warrants the investment in time and money. Wrongly pitched product launches can easily be the result. We site an example of a kitchen manufacturing company which was about to launch a website for purchasing kitchen components. A short focus group test market session indicated they needed to tweak their campaign and introduce a “touch and feel” element – women would not buy the kitchens without feeling/seeing the surfaces. They adjusted their service accordingly and went on to a successful launch.

Had they not undertaken that focus group session they would have launched and spent years reshaping their product offerings.

The focus group was cost effective and saved considerable time.

Successful commercialisation doesn’t have to be about trial and error. There are proven, cost-effective ways to bring products and services to market without wasted effort and heartache.

Start with assessing the opportunity correctly, build a team around the opportunity and understand the marketplace. Seek out advice from those that have trodden the path before.

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Kate Ingham is the Senior Client Manager with Alchemy Equities, a Sydney-based business innovation consultancy firm which assists companies commercialise technologies and services. Alchemy Equities is contracted by the NSW state government to deliver the NSW Innovation Advisory Service.