Innovation
We weigh innovation according to the value it delivers. Not how shiny it looks.
Innovation Strategy Development
Innovation Readiness & Enablement
Innovation Programme Delivery
Commercialising Innovation
Read more…
Ask 100 people what innovation is and you’ll get as many different answers.
Many will sound interesting. Some won’t make sense. And plenty will come in the form of examples that simply make you think “but…why?”
At Tih we believe that true innovation provides outcomes that are valuable – and that effective business transformation involves extracting that value.
Innovation isn’t a goal, it’s a process.
We apply the principles of innovation to the challenges your business faces.
And we create value by doing things differently.
Recent Innovation Projects
5G RuralFirst
A co-innovation project led by Cisco and the University of Strathclyde, and co-funded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), 5G RuralFirst brought together 30 organisations including technology providers, public sector organisations, universities, and numerous start-ups and small businesses, to demonstrate a compelling business case for the deployment of 5G in rural areas. Following the deployment of 5G technology in Somerset, Shropshire and the Orkney Islands, over 20 use cases were demonstrated across sectors including agriculture, renewable energy, media and tourism.
Find out more about this project at my closing blog post.
Mi-IDEA
Mi-IDEA is an innovation centre located in the heart of Manchester Science Park, created to support the growth of early-stage tech start-ups working in areas including smart cities, Internet of Things (IoT), digital healthcare and the digital creative sector. A joint venture between Cisco and Manchester Science Partnerships, the centre opened in 2017 and operates a post-accelerator programme to help start-ups with product development, customer acquisition, team expansion, and investment.
Take a 360° virtual tour of Mi-IDEA here.
Innovation Challenges
Recognising the opportunity to take a value-led approach to innovation, Mi-IDEA launched the ‘Cisco Challenges’ programme. Designed from the outset to create commercial value for both the challenge sponsor and the challenge participants, the Innovation Challenge programme engaged four sponsoring organisations from across private sector, public sector and academia to co-innovate with the winning start-ups and small businesses.
Spanning challenges including dealing with limited car parking, optimising public transport, and responding to the decline in the honey bee, the programme received over 200 applications, created eight co-innovation opportunities, and resulted in a number of commercial partnerships that subsequently created value for both the sponsor and start-up.
Start your innovation journey here
You’re probably used to seeing the word innovation everywhere you go by now.
And you’re also probably sure it’s something that, if you’re not already giving it a go, you should be doing.
But explaining how, or more importantly, why you’re going to do it is less straightforward.
You might have started identifying bright-minded organisations you’d like to partner with, but you’re unsure of how to approach them with co-innovation in mind.
It might be that your business already has an innovation strategy in place, but it’s not generating the value you want from it.
You might be treating innovation as its own entity entirely.
ThinkInnovate exists to help you understand not just how to innovate, but why you want to do it in the first place. Then, we surface innovation opportunities in your business, and apply the principles of innovation to the work you deliver everyday.
Ready to give value-driven innovation a go? Let’s talk.
How can we help?
Innovation Strategy Development
Why do you want to innovate?
Where do you start?
And who do you do it with?
All these questions and more require an innovation strategy that’s tailored specifically to your organisation, combining proven innovation models with real-life experience of what works (and what doesn’t!).
Innovation Readiness & Enablement
Creating an environment for innovation is not just about giving it space from your core business.
It’s about ensuring that your organisation is ready to embrace, deliver, and extract value from the innovation programmes it creates.
This means everyone, from finance to HR, from production to customer service, are capable of embracing and supporting your innovation efforts.
Is your organisation ready?
Innovation Programme Delivery
With a clear strategy, and an organisation that’s ready, your innovation programme can begin. But to maximise the opportunity for success, Innovation needs to be managed.
Building an innovation centre, running challenges to collaborate with start-ups, or leading co-innovation projects with 30 partners - all of these need to be managed with an innovation methodology - otherwise opportunities will be missed, and value will be difficult to extract.
Commercialising Innovation
The outputs from innovation programmes are often impressive, with trendy collaborative co-working spaces, strong relationships between start-ups and enterprises, and proven concepts for what the future might look like.
But many ultimately fail because that’s where the innovation programme ends.
Commercialising the value from an innovation effort is arguably the most important stage, otherwise we fail to answer the question - “Why?”