Innovation e-newsletter Autumn 2007
New projects for Innovation Centres Scotland Ltd - Wellness Innovation & Technology and Nesta
Wellness Innovation and Technology initiative
Work is underway to identify ways in which Scottish businesses can win a slice of the $200bn global wellness innovation and technology industry.
This follows the results of a feasibility study carried out by Innovation Centres Scotland (ICS)Ltd in association with Scottish Enterprise Renfrewshire, which identified an opportunity to develop a Scotland-wide project to support the development of wellness related companies and technologies.
Now ICS has received support to take forward a project to grow a Scottish supply chain which is recognised as a leader in the global wellness market. It aims to support companies who are using innovation and technology to promote 'a healthy state' through preventative healthcare products and services which help to avoid crisis's and increase an individuals' ability to live independently'.
Tom Ogilvie, CEO of Innovation Centres Scotland Ltd said,
"We are delighted to be working on this project as we have worked with a growing number of companies planning innovative technologies and solutions for this sector over the last few years. Scotland definitely has the entrepreneurs and forward thinking companies who can develop innovative ideas and technologies to reach this sector and ICS has the reach to be able to help these companies through their extensive experience in supporting new market entrants through all stages of product and business development".
David Cross from Scottish Enterprise Renfrewshire said, "We can see significant economic impact potential in developing ‘wellness' as a focused market push for Scotland. The initial feasibility study identified individual lifestyle management and independent living as two key areas where a pipeline of companies can be developed to benefit from the growth of this global market sector."
ICS Ltd has extensive experience in defining new market sectors through the Wireless Innovation initiative, which they have been managing since 2003. The wireless and mobile marketplace started with 30 companies when the Wireless Innovation initiative kicked-off and there are now over 170 companies working in this sector in Scotland.
Nesta Starter for 6 Programme
ICS Ltd have partnered with NESTA to provide advisory support to 22 exciting young companies across Scotland who received funding through their Starter for 6 programme.
NESTA are the largest single endowment devoted exclusively to supporting talent, innovation and creativity in the UK. Companies successful on the NESTA Starter for 6 programme have received funding of up to £10k to help them grow and develop their innovation.
Based out of the 'Incubation suites' at Alba Innovation Centre and Hillington Park Innovation Centre, two dedicated advisors have been working with the companies, since August, to provide advice and monitor their progress.
Safehinge, who received the full £10,000 from NESTA, are now based at the Hillington Park Innovation Centre, and have developed a hinge which transforms the way in which a door opens and closes to prevent the 30,000 door-related injuries which children suffer annually in the UK. Safehinge have received their funding from Nesta and have been working closely with the advisors to develop their first prototypes.
The next round of Starter for 6 programmes has now been launched and ICS Ltd is working closely with NESTA to identify the companies who are likely to receive support during this round.
Hillington News
Hillington Celebrates its’ 7th birthday
Hillington Park Innovation Centre has seen a number of innovative, forward-thinking companies start-up, incubate, grow and ultimately graduate since it opened its' doors to tenants 7 years ago.
When its partners, MEPC and Scottish Enterprise Renfrewshire developed the idea of creating an incubation hub in the middle of Hillington, their core aim was to encourage new, innovative technology companies to develop their business idea in an environment where other like-minded companies were close to hand.
Now, 7 years on, the figures speak for themselves!
131 companies in total have developed their businesses from the Innovation Centre since it opened its doors in November 2000, 74 companies have graduated and are now running very successful businesses, with the majority choosing to stay in Renfrewshire. In total, a staggering 558 new jobs have been created as a result of companies locating in the Innovation Centre!
So what is it that makes the Hillington Park Innovation Centre such a success? Colin Urquhart, Managing Director of Dimensional Imaging - one of the companies currently located in the Innovation Centre who are leading their field in three dimensional surface image capture for the medical industry - said,
"As one of the longest standing tenants in the Centre we are delighted with the facilities and support we have received throughout our 4 years here. The location is great and very convenient for Glasgow and Renfrewshire, the facilities are very flexible and the advisory support team have been very supportive of our requirements as we have grown. The serviced office facilities are really useful and emphasise to our customers that we are a very professional company".
Peter Inglis, Managing Director of 4C Design - a graduate tenant of the Centre specialising in product design said,
"We received access to the best advice about funding available and this helped ensure that 4C Design could fulfil its start-up plan thanks to the Innovation Centre team. The service and facilities helped us hit the ground running and that is vital for any new ground-breaking business".
ICS Ltd, the company that manages the Hillington Park Innovation Centre is delighted with the success of the Centre. Tom Ogilvie, Chief Executive said,
"The Innovation Centre is such a hive of activity. With so many of Scotland's entrepreneurs in one confined area, it's hard not to get excited when you know that these are our next generation of successful businesses. We work hard to create an environment where these companies can be innovative and can spend time developing products which are market leading.
Our advisory team are hand picked to ensure they offer the right levels of support and advice to companies to accelerate them to the next level. Our failure rate of companies is only 10%, well below the national average, which indicates the success of our incubation support programme. R&D is a huge proportion of the work carried out by companies in the Centre - over the last 6 months alone, we have seen almost 50 new products being developed by companies currently located in the Centre."
As Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft once said, "Never before in history has innovation offered promise of so much to so many in so short a time" - he could easily have been referring to the successes of the Hillington Park Innovation Centre.
ICS opened many doors for Scotland's technology entrepreneurs
Open Doors 2007 which took place at the Hillington Park Innovation Centre on Friday 28th September attracted over 150 young Scottish technology companies who were keen to discuss partnerships with some of the world’s leading technology organisations including:
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During the event, organised by Innovation Centres Scotland Limited, the attendees met on a one-to-one basis with some of the world’s largest technology players to discuss collaboration, joint ventures and partnerships.
A number of discussions have already led to commercial partnerships being initiated. Huw Evans, Director of Media and Content Consultancy practice at LogicaCMG said:
“We’ve been very impressed with the quality of people we have met today. They have taken the time to understand what LogicaCMG does and have tailored their pitch accordingly. There have been some really interesting ideas coming forward in the areas of language input solutions and field force automation. I was particularly impressed by a potential software application which can identify which language you are speaking. As far as I am aware no one else has come up with such an application.”
"Having all these technology organisations in the one location was fantastic for us, it would've taken us months of effort to find the right contacts and organise 1:1 meetings with them!"
Business Manager, Design LED
"We had a very positive meeting with one of the world’s mobile industry leaders. They have agreed to trial our technology."
Anthony Ashbrook, Managing Director of Mobile Acuity
"Networking in this environment is extremely high quality whether you are an SME, an OEM or an investor."
Stuart Bain of Third Circle Business Development
15 new tenants for Hillington during 2007
Ross Clark the Centre Director for Hillington, is delighted with the number of new client tenants, many with interesting and innovative technologies, who have moved into the Hillington Park Innovation Centre since the beginning of 2007. Ross said,
“The whole ethos of the Centre is to sign up good quality, potential high growth companies and provide each one with full innovation advisory support to accelerate and grow their business, so ultimately they will graduate as a highly successful business. It is imperative therefore that we select the right type of companies to move into the Centre initially and we are delighted to have such a spectrum of companies this year that meet this objective.”
With a total tenancy in the Hillington Park Innovation Centre of 38 companies, 10 of these client tenants have moved in since January 2007.
Although the Centre is not focussed on taking in University spin-outs, it is encouraging to see that 5 out of the 15 new companies (who are a mixture of full tenants and gold virtual licences) are all University/College related, developing innovation in new technology areas.
New Clients for 2007
Full Client Tenancy
Gaia-Wind : develop and manufacture small and efficient niche market wind turbines for supplying electricity to properties such as private houses, farms, offices, companies and swimming pools.
Forms4pda : Forms4pda’s application is an outstanding end to end mobile solution for your PDA taking you from the initial form design through deployment, data capture and reporting in one inclusive application.
Getty Images/Scoopt : Scoopt is the world’s first commercial 'citizen journalism' agency, created specifically to connect members of the public with the mainstream media. Getty Images, the world's leading creator and distributor of visual content, acquired Scoopt in March 2007.
University of Paisley : Through the former e-business centre at Paisley and connections with the wireless group, the University has entered into a formal relationship with the Centre for mutual benefit, allowing the Centre tenants opportunity to gain access to technical and academic expertise and allow the University a commercial route for potential student placements and spin-offs.
Motional Media : Motion Media creates and distributes engaging and interesting content via a highly-visual communications system on buses and potentially light railway trains.
SpeechStorm : SpeechStormT is a trading division of Kainos® Software, who are a leading systems integrator within the UK and Irish markets. In 2004 Kainos established SpeechStormT as a dedicated business unit to develop and deliver advanced Speech Recognition solutions.
Armadale Technologies Ltd : Armadale Technologies is a research and development company, currently operating within the fields of computer vision, smart cameras and target tracking to develop a cost-efficient Intelligent Video Surveillance (IVS) system, which will analyse and predict human behaviour for the purposes of security.
Safehinge Ltd : Safehinge is a company which aims to improve the safety and functionality of doors in both public and private buildings. They have developed a hinge which transforms the way in which a door opens and closes to prevent the 30,000 door-related injuries which children suffer annually in the UK.
Amivox : Amivox are a supplier of mobile and internet solutions, providing a ‘non-intrusive’ mobile social networking platform targeted at students.
Appshare : AppShare is a software company engaged in developing a new form of application sharing technology, called ‘ ePlace ’. Appshare is a spin-out of the University of Strathclyde.
Gold Virtual Licences
AAP Tech : AAP Tech provide electronics products that are capable of performing in almost any environment, from the depths of the ocean to the expanses of space. They offer a range of products in electronics, cables and Mechanical Engineering (including tool manufacturing, metalworking and plastic moulding).
Think Tank : Think Tank delivers cutting-edge proprietary solutions and business services built upon advanced mathematics and artificial intelligence (AI).
Intimate Sessions Events : Intimate Session Events Ltd broadcast live music events in real time over the internet. Broadcasts will be in "full screen" and as close to high definition as possible - to enable anyone with broadband to enjoy a live music event.
Fruit Crème : Fruit Crème has designed and fabricated an assembly/machine and process that will allow the input of frozen/peeled fruit and output it in a soft whipped ice cream state. They will manufacture, sell and distribute Fruitcreme machines and their products to a global market.
Market Vendor Jobs : Market Vendor Jobs provides an on-line integrated recruitment solution, encompassing all the recruitment process elements for the global financial market vendor community. The Portal will provide an advertising job board, CV database, networking solution and full range of recruitment related products.
Rocks increase ticket bookings by 500%
NSDesign provide ecommerce solution to Scotland’s only professional basketball team
Scotland ’s only professional basketball team, the SAMG Verve Scottish Rocks have been through a major restructure over the last year.
2007 was a turning point for the club as they brought on new partners, new kit, new coach, new crew members and a new ecommerce solution offering online ticketing.
One of the issues for the club was determining how to make it easier and more accessible for their fans to buy tickets and find out up-to-the-minute information on the games and the BBL Championship Table. Another consideration for the club was finding partners to collaborate with. They were looking for partners who had a personal investment in the future of the club and, ultimately, were a Scottish company who were passionate about the game and had the foresight to see what the Rocks were trying to achieve.
Gary Ennis, Managing Director of NSDesign who are located at the award winning Hillington Park Innovation Centre said,
“I myself have been a Rocks fan for a number of years and have attended many of their games during that time, so I have a real passion in helping the Rocks progress. I believe our ecommerce solution has been an essential part of the Rocks evolution and we are working hard to ensure we drive fans to the website.”
Bruce Cook, General Manager of the Rocks said,
“We have some ambitious goals and NSDesign have been vital in helping us to optimise the opportunities that come with a modern website. As Scotland’s only professional basketball team, the site is a key part of the future of the team and we plan to use this as a platform to not only service our existing fans but also encourage as many people as possible to take an interest in our product – which is a lot more than just professional basketball.”
“The link up between NSDesign and the SAMG Verve Scottish Rocks is an excellent example of collaboration and something we regularly promote to companies within our Innovation Centres, both in Alba and Hillington. Partnerships are essential for every business, whether a sports club or a technology business and it is encouraging to see a large international organisation partnering up with a small Scottish based company to achieve outstanding results" Anna-Marie Taylor, Marketing Manager, Innovation Centres Scotland Ltd.
Alba News
Catalise expand into Egypt
Catalise who recently graduated from the Alba Innovation Centre have grown from strength to strength during their time in the Centre. With the development of Smartycars.com and their joint venture with SMG, Catalise have well exceeded their business growth predictions.
With 175,000 visitors to the Smartycars website per month and SMG committed to spending a 7-figure marketing budget promoting it, Catalise are currently signing 30-40 dealers per month and are expecting this to grow to 100 per month by next quarter.
Bill Smart and his team are always looking for new opportunities and ways to grow and diversify the business. They have recently opened a new office in Egypt which employs 12 developers building and maintaining the website (and back-end functionality). Bill saw a real opportunity to employ good quality developers at a reasonable cost and saw Egypt as a real growth area. They are now considering opening a Training Centre on their Egypt site.
The Catalise model is simple - Catalise absorb all the up-front costs to build and develop the website and then take a share of the profits made from the products/services sold via the website. In the case of Smartycars, Catalise own 30% of the business, whilst SMG own the other 70%.
Bill Smart, founder of Catalise is a real entrepreneur - he is always looking for new opportunities and ways to grow and diversity the business. He is already considering a new marketing strategy for Smartyhomes and Smartyjobs and they currently setting up the "Smartycars Challenge" car race which will commence in April 2008. A recent PWC study estimated the Smartycars business to be worth a capital value of £50-£85million in 5 years time - not bad for a small Scottish based forward thinking company!
Innovation Accelerator Panel brings new Chairman for Funky Moves
Funky Moves Ltd. aims to create, design and supply interactive sports and training equipment by combining state of the art technology in novel ways. Their product, Funky Cones is a revolutionary new educational concept that puts more fun into every child's school day - in the PE class as well as in the class room.
One of the key issues Funky Moves faced recently was scalability of their business. The team at Alba invited Funky Moves to present at an Innovation Accelerator Panel where the expert panel really challenged the Funky Moves business.
Ralf Klinnert, founder of Funky Moves commented, “The expert panel questioned all areas of my business and Ken Lewandowski (one of the panel) probed me on how I was going to accelerate mass market sales of my product. I took a really hard look at my business, following the innovation accelerator panel, and identified major strategic changes to be made to accelerate company development. One of the positive actions I have already put in place is to appoint Ken Lewandowski as Chairman of Funky Moves!”
To find out more about the Innovation Accelerator Panels at Hillington or Alba Innovation Centres, email panel@innovationcentre.org
Wireless News
Wireless Innovation sponsors Best Wireless/Mobile Solution at the Scottish Software Awards
Wireless Innovation are sponsoring the “Best Wireless/Mobile Software Solution” at this years Scottish Software Awards. Companies developing any application, solution or product across the whole of Scotland are encouraged to nominate themselves for this category. Now in their 5th year, the quality and volume of entrants continues to increase year on year. To meet the demand, the organisers have expanded the category choice to embrace the creativity and innovation that are demonstrated in each and every application. This year's award categories are:
• Scottish Software Company 2007
• Emerging Software Business
• Best Software Product
• International Software Business Award
• Best Wireless/Mobile Software Solution
• Best Embedded Software Solution
• Best Digital Media Software Solution
Brendan Waters, Senior Innovation Manager for Innovation Centres Scotland is part of the judging team for the awards which takes place on Friday 23rd Nov.
Adaptxt does the business at the Symbian Smartphone Show
The Symbian Smartphone show which took place in London in October proved to the best one yet for Andrew Glen and the team at Keypoint.
The show is dedicated to anyone developing for the Symbian platform and the buyers at the show were actively looking for productivity applications and distributors.
Andrew Glen, Marketing Manager at Keypoint highlighted,
“We were really impressed by the number of good quality decision makers who were at the show. Normally you end up with a lot of time-wasters on your stand, but they obviously don’t attend the Symbian show! The buyers who were mainly retail distributors, telco operators, OEMs and other software developers were looking for companies providing new, but different applications and solutions which is an encouraging sign for developers.”
Andrew went on to say,
“The show was excellent for market intelligence in terms of what’s going to happen to the smartphone market in the future. We discussed a number of partnership and commercial opportunities which we are now following up and have already had a few meetings. This is definitely a worthwhile show for anyone working in the Enterprise space developing consumer applications for the Symbian platform”.
Adaptxt is next generation predictive text. Adaptxt actually understands language, it learns how you write in realtime and it learns from your documents. Adaptxt stores your language in a Personal Dictionary and when you type, it constantly adapts to your context.
AIMS aim high with their new Bluetooth application
A recent graduate of the Hillington Park Innovation Centre, Accelerated Integrated Marketing Solutions (AIMS) are leading the way with their Bluetooth mobile marketing solution.
AIMS existing software focuses on client attraction and retention and the Bluetooth promotional tool has opened new channels for their business.
Having rolled out the solution to a popular bar and well know hairdressers in Glasgow, AIMS are now running trials on the service with USC (including D2, Office and Cube), 3D Entertainment (who manage 93 nightclubs throughout the UK), Festival Inns in Edinburgh and Premier Travel Inn, to name but a few.
Users of the Bluetooth solution are delighted that this is a quick, relatively cheap way to push messages to new and existing customers. It is used quite often to push special offers, vouchers and promotions and all the recipient needs to do to receive them is ensure the Bluetooth on their mobile is enabled.
AIMS have been using the Wireless Developer Centre in the Hillington Park Innovation Centre to carry out testing and demonstrate the technology to potential customers. Ian Barclay, MD of AIMS said,
“The Wireless Developer Centre has been invaluable to us over the last 6 months. The facilities and range of devices are exactly what we need and the environment of the Centre is perfect for product development. The Wireless Innovation team have also been invaluable in helping us increase our network of contacts.”
The Mobile Marketing Evolution
Anthony Ashbrook, Managing Director of Mobile Acuity reviews last month's Mobile Marketing Forum in Barcelona
"The Mobile Marketing industry is complex and should have more of an emphasis on the word marketing rather than mobile; developers playing in this space need to know, it's not about how intuitive the technology is, rather it's all about getting more value from your marketing!
The potential of Mobile Marketing has been banded about for some time now, but the big question at the conference was ‘are we still on the cusp or do we have a mainstream market yet?' and ‘have the Brands and agencies woken up to the fact that they really need to be considering mobile as a channel for their marketing communications?' The industry has developed two main approaches, cross-media marketing which is using mobile to extend traditional marketing campaigns such as txt-to-win and as a marketing channel in itself e.g. selling advertising space as banners and interstitials on mobile internet content. I believe there is real opportunity in both segments of the market, but the strongest opportunity exists in cross-media marketing. The mobile is unique in that it is the only device we always have with us when consuming other types of media and this creates exciting opportunities for marketers.
The show was a real mixed audience from some Brands, technology providers and a few marketing agencies. The biggest question that was posed at the show was ‘how do the agencies convince Brands that there is real value in the mobile channel?' Statistics are few and far between as the market is still in its infancy and there is little momentum as campaigns are still limited. There isn't an equivalent to ‘google analytics' for the mobile channel yet which makes the job of convincing the Brands that this should be a key communication channel for their business, difficult.
Evidence from the conference speakers and people I met at the show all points to this industry starting to turn. Nokia's purchase of Enpocket, AOL's purchase of Third Screen Media and Microsoft's purchase of Screen Tonic all show that the industry is being taken seriously and they can see the huge potential mobile marketing can offer. The Operators have identified huge potential in inventory left on mobiles daily, txts, SMS messages, the end of voice-mails, where there is an opportunity for them to leverage this amount of inventory through mobile marketing messages.
The market for MMS is now huge - traffic reached 13.7billion messages in Q2 2007, according to Informa's World Cellular Data Metrics. This data alone shows the Brands that mobile is a very important channel for marketing communications - particularly for consumers - as ‘mobile is always on' and the previous negative comments on SMS are now declining. Following my research at the show, people working in advertising confirmed that shortcodes are a good medium for people to find out more information by sending a txt message but this is not 100% reliable as between 5-10% are lost due to wrong keywords being entered by the consumer. There are potentially more benefits in using pictures as they are virtually foolproof. Sending a picture is not just simpler, but also more reliable.
If there was one major disappointment about the Show, it was that it was mostly industry talking to the industry; where were the Brands?, where were the agencies? and why weren't they there to find out about the mobile technologies? If this is an industry on the cusp, then these are the buyers/influencers who need to sit up and find out how important mobile will be for their business. Let's hope they don't wait until next year before they finally ‘wake up' and realise that mobile marketing is the new internet marketing!"
Anthony's company, Mobile Acuity have developed a mobile marketing platform that allows consumers to interact with offline media (posters, magazines and so on) using a camera phone. Their mobile marketing service, snap2win TM , which was launched at 3GSM 2007, matches MMS picture messages sent by consumers to an image database and if a match is found a pre-defined response is sent back to the handset. Suitable graphics include posters and other print material at retail, contents of magazines, billboards, flyers and outdoor displays. Snap2win TM campaigns provide a new and exciting mechanic for engaging potential customers in brands or products.
To have your stories considered for the next edition of Innovation, please email them to marketing@innovationcentre.org
