• SME Innovation

    “Out-sourced” innovation capacity for smaller businesses

SME Innovation

A course designed specifically for smaller companies and SME’s.

These organizations are usually less sophisticated in their approach to NPD than major corporations. They do not usually have trained NPD specialists or R&D departments and they have fewer resources to devote to the innovation effort. Therefore, they usually need a higher level of support from Excalibur and this is provided by our SME Programme.

Like the programmes above this is a workshop based approach but with different companies participating on the same programme – typically up to 10 businesses on the same programme. These are usually selected to as far as possible not include any companies that may be competitor’s.

The features of this programme are as follows:

  1. Introduction to innovation and business modelling
  2. Idea generation
  3. Assessment of ideas
  4. Venture portfolio selection
  5. Initial commercial pathways
  6. Creative problem solving
  7. Venture optimisation
  8. Problematical questions
  9. Launch planning

The benefits of Sword SME Programme for smaller companies can be considered as:

  • Provides an “out-sourced” innovation capacity for smaller businesses enabling them to explore the future potential of their enterprise in a safe learning environment
  • Reduces cost, time and risk for the smaller companies in bringing new products and services to the market
  • Trains SME mangers in innovation and creativity so they can repeat the process in house with minimal input from Excalibur
  • Allows cross fertilization of ideas across different business sectors leading to more creative ideas that have greater profit and growth potential
  • Allows networking on innovation issues that increases productivity and the possibility of “cross trading”

The Sword SME programme has been run nationwide in the UK and programmes have also been run overseas with good interest in the programme in Hong Kong SAR of the People Republic of China in recent years. Where we have run several programmes.

The above fact also points to the export potential of these programmes that can assist the wealth creation potential of the local economy.

From left: managing director Andy Stevenson and Suhail Aslam from Teesside University (Image: Michelle Maddison Photography)

Click the photo to view a news item about the output from a recent programme.