Given the importance and prominence of Innovation activities in large scale collaborative funding programmes, RIKON can deliver value in a range of EU funding instruments. Avenues where RIKON can deliver valuable inputs (at either task or workpackage levels) include:
PROPOSAL DEVELOPMENT AND WRITING: As experienced proposal writers, we can actively contribute to the development and writing of winning proposals, providing inputs at a number of critical phases, including: Concept Investigation phase; Technology Development phase (market and commercial feasibility validation) and Commercialisation & Exploitation phase – routes to market, business modelling, channel and market optimisations. Specifically we have expertise in the following areas:
PROJECT MANAGEMENT: We have considerable experience and insights into designing and implementing innovation strategies, frameworks and tools in projects to support industries end-to-end innovation requirements. Our experienced business developers can take the role of Innovation Managers in projects. We have successfully project managed a large number of research to innovation projects and have a core team of experienced project managers.
STATE OF THE ART: Based on academic and applied research expertise, we can draw on our extensive knowledge of current state-of-the-art in innovation and business development processes, frameworks, methodologies and tools to provide a comprehensive overview of SoTA in these areas for the proposal.
DISSEMINATION: Through our collaborations with leading European service innovation research centres, our client companies and policy-makers, we can add value to a project’s communication and outreach activities. We are highly experienced networkers and are prominent in a number of business communities. In addition, our successful publishing record in books, refereed journals and at leading international conferences can provide a valuable dissemination channel for projects
Commercialisation, innovation and exploitation research expertise: We work with companies and RTD performers to develop commercialisation, innovation and exploitation strategies which will see technological breakthroughs and service innovations quickly reach the market. We can support consortium partners in Ideation, Market Analysis, Business development, Service Design and Market Development. We can work with innovators to develop diversification and growth strategies and roadmaps, develop and test business models for new product / service offerings, develop new service delivery, marketing channels and branding strategies. Our experienced research strategists and consultants are well-placed to play a leading role in a project’s commercial exploitation tasks.
RIKON Research Task Specialisms
Business requirements & strategy
- Capture, document and roadmap business requirements around needs, opportunities, barriers, standards, challenges, and desired solutions.
- Provide insights about business strategies related to project base technologies, their integrated solution sets, and global project approach.
Business Value Proposition End Users
- Customer profiling and scenario analysis – What is the profile of the customers and in what situations would they be using the service?
- Pains/Gains analysis – What pains do users experience with current solutions? What gains would fulfil their needs above and beyond expectations?
- Segmentation – can we group customers into identifiable segments?
- Targeting – how do we reach these group of customers with targeted messages?
- Positioning – where does the AVAIL prototype fit into existing marketplace?
- Value proposition development – development of compelling value propositions for each customer segment
Business Convergence and MVP Modelling
- Complementing ICT developments and to ensure commercial/business alignment, WIT-RIKON can deploy the principles of business convergence and Minimum Viable Product (MVP) modelling.
- This business–focused lens will ensure the validity ofcritical assumptions/hypotheses surrounding the business model and value proposition are incorporated into the development activities
Agile Business Model development & validation
- State of the art review – past projects; trends; industry analysis; literature review
- Foundations for the market design – pricing; regulation; levels of customisation required
- Value flow analysis – understanding the roles and relationships and the flows of value between each actor in the value chain
- Overall market design – the rules and procedures required to create a functioning marketplace
- Business Cases – development of business cases that can be used to ensure convergence between technological and business specifications
Exploitation Plans
- Development and refinement of an exploitation roadmap/ business plan comprising of, but not limited to:
- Market and application context analyses;
- Value propositioning;
- Competitive positioning
- Cost-benefit analysis and revenue/funding generation scenarios; and
- Strategies for post-project exploitation in the form of both further ICT development options and sustainable commercial deployment.