Specialists in Innovation Strategy

 

 

Our expertise across innovation, policy development, international project management and extensive network of contacts will help ensure your project's success.

 

We offer:

• Whitehall knowhow, including excellent relationships across the UK Government and its agencies– helping us to help you get the lowdown on wider innovation strategy and opportunities and to navigate Government.

• Extensive networks that reach into a range of research institutions, businesses and entrepreneurs – helping us to provide you with novel and transformative opportunities to collaborate

• Sector expertise with a strategic, but also lived, understanding of how innovation works, from Government to business level – helping us to understand your needs and to offer strategic but also practical recommendations

• Strategy nous: we have between us, over 30 years of experience in analysis, policy development and strategy making – you give us your challenge, we will handle it

• Flexibility and pragmatism:  through an unrivalled network of associates and a “can do” approach – for each project, we put together the right team, specific to your needs, to get the job done.

 

Our work will help you:

• Develop new insights 

• Identify new partnerships

• Secure stakeholder engagement and commitment

• Define what you want to do, explore your options and articulate strategy and delivery plans to make it happen.

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Recent/current projects:

• Developing strategy on how to apply UK clean energy technology in Africa and South East Asia - Funded by UK Government partners with extensive engagement of industry and academic stakeholders

• Supporting a Local Enterprise Partnership to explore how they can exploit strengths in particular technologies to benefit the region’s industrial base

• Advising a large national networking business on how to grow its services for Government Departments

• Advising a Local Enterprise Partnership on the design and implementation of a new partnership model to drive economic growth through innovation in their region

• A range of projects with Chinese partners including work for Chinese clients to facilitate the flow of sustainable food and agriculture products and technologies between the UK and China.

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Commercialisation Support Services

 

 Unconventional Connections has formed a partnership with Finovista to offer this service.  We draw on our extensive network of technology and commercialisation specialists from across the UK and beyond.

 

The core aim of many national and regional innovation support agencies is to enable technologies and innovations being developed within the research institutions within their county/region to be taken into the market, primarily by the technology being taken up by a company within that country/region.  

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We offer a service for innovation support agencies and research institutions that are developing technologies with commercial potential that builds on the extensive real-world commercialisation experience of our team of experts to provide:

• An objective and realistic assessment of the commercial readiness and potential value of technologies – we can focus on the value in your domestic market and/or on its potential value in Western markets with which our own experts are already familiar

• actionable recommendations regarding the way forward in developing and validating the technology and in engaging with the target market(s).

 

Our aim will be to enable the owners of the technologies to plot a Commercialisation Strategy and deal with uncertainties, develop the necessary relationships and build their own knowledge of the markets as they evolve and into which they must find the place for their Technology. 

 

We can develop a package of services including:

• Commercial readiness assessment reports – offering a lower unit price where it is agreed that we will receive assignments of groups of technologies

• Follow on coaching for the research institution to take forward the recommendations and a successful commercialisation strategy

• Coaching or support for any enterprise that procures a license to use the technology to assist it in all the aspects of taking this to the market and scaling up production

• Training in related topics.

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With Finovista, we responded to a Request for Empanelment of Consulting Agencies from Invest India.  Our proposition was based on having brought together an incredibly talented and experienced team of specialists in all areas of food and agriculture technology, who could carry out commercial readiness assessments and offer practical and realistic advice and coaching to technology owners seeking help with commercialisation.  Sadly we were not successful but we remain convinced this service could be of considerable value and are actively seeking new clients for it.

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