August Spotlight: Welmien Foster
Welmien is one of our smartest clients with one of the biggest hearts we know. She has a degree in microbiology and is fascinated by anything that can only be seen under a microscope especially if it is infectious and dangerous to human health.
Welmien is currently working on a number of new innovative ideas to not only monitor waterborne microbes but be able to identify them and their source before they infect animals and humans. She works as a water analyst doing surveys at hotels, hospitals and other public entities, but her passion is finding that innovative way to be ahead of the curve of infectious diseases and stop them dead in their tracks.
We are always excited to have her in our offices as this is always followed by great conversation, laughter and yet another brilliant idea to add to the product development cycle we are working on. We look forward to the near future when water becomes a safer resource for both urban and rural consumers throughout Africa because of what Welmien has developed.
If you are interested in knowing more about water and those pesky micro bugs, Welmien is available for short talks and water assessments. You can contact her through our offices.
Help I have a new Idea?
New ideas come and go as fast as taxi buses on the N2, but knowing which are good and which to let go is the difficult process that most people struggle with. But help is at hand: The Innovation Wind Tunnel is now officially open for business.
The Wind Tunnel is a place where new ideas are tested against a number of different platforms to ensure they are robust and geared to withstand the stresses of the current marketplace. The first filter is a simple pitch to the panel: this is done at initial idea stage where you can pitch your concept, no matter how early in the idea phase, to get some solid expertise feedback. This feedback is designed to enable you to iterate the concept as many times as possible in the early stages of development to ensure your idea becomes as solid as possible before you begin to test it in the marketplace and cost you money.
On completion of the pitch, we offer two sets of reports that do solid research on the presenting problem you are addressing and another report to validate the product offering you are proposing. These two reports will form the base of your application for funding from TIA or similar institutions for seed funding that will address the POC or Proof of Concept development and any IP or Intellectual Property submissions.
For a more comprehensive look at these stages: check out our website on https://em-solutions.co.za/wind-tunnel/
August spotlight: Michelle Davidson
Michelle Davidson is one of the founding partners of Entrepreneur and Management Solutions. She started her career in the non-profit financial sector after completing her B.Com in Information systems at UCT.
Michelle has over a decade of experience with non-profits having assisted with many budgeting, planning and strategic sessions. She has a passion not only for the numbers but the people in these organisations. Her happy place is working with people, spreadsheets and strategic processes to improve current performance and profits.
Michelle has a huge vision of developing a business that is able to provide wall to wall services for the non-profit and small business. This vision is slowly coming into focus with the merge of her own business MD Business Solutions with the Entrepreneur Incubator in 2016 to create Entrepreneur and Management Solutions. Watch this space as Michelle plots out and executes her vision over the next few years to develop a strong business structure that will continue to serve businesses and business people well into the future.
Michelle is married to Richard and has a son in Grade 2 at Wynberg Boys. She has a passion for drawing, art and music and spending quality time with family and friends.
Types of Innovation for Your Business
We established in the previous blog article that Innovation needs to be done, always. Innovation should be a regular part of the manager’s focus and staff activity in any business. But what is innovation and how can it be applied to your business?
There are typically four main types of innovation that we see in business:
Market Pull Innovation: this is a response to what your customers want. Based on their needs and wants your business can respond and develop the further product offering to meet those needs. This is typically the normal evolution of a products life cycle. We launch with an MVP or minimal Viable Product and then iterate according to customers comments and needs.
Technology Push Innovation: this is when a new product or technology comes on the market that the potential customers do not yet know of or have a need for. This could be a whole new product or an additional feature to an existing product. This becomes a harder sell to customers and often only taken up by the early adaptors within your customer base. But as the technology and benefits get known it turns from a push into a pull and the demand grows.
Frugal Innovation: We have come to see a lot of this in recent times in our own personal lives as well as in business. Frugal innovation addresses how we do more with less. Cutting back on resources such as electricity, water and staff and common across all sectors. The awareness of environmental impact and cost saving all lead to frugal innovation in business.
Marketing Innovation is an interesting one that we follow closely. It is the constant battle for customer attention through marketing. Brands spend huge sums of money with agencies to develop campaigns that will get the initial attention of customers and then try to keep it as long as possible driving this attention to sales. Creative campaigns include great TV and radio adverts together with client engagement activities.
But no matter what type of innovation you do in your business, ensure that it is client focused and moves your business away from any decline or plateau in sales and customer attention.
Why Innovate Your Business
Last week I had the opportunity to present to a group of business owners on why we need Innovation in business. The majority of the audience seemed a little shell-shocked at the reasons for innovation and the need to have innovation as part of the regular activity in any business.
So let me unpack some of these here in this and a series of blogs for you to read through.
Why do we need to innovate in business?
Three main reasons support this answers, but all have the same purpose. Attention span: personal attention span, product attention span and the life cycle of a business. For each one the life or attention span is limited and soon drops off as people get tired, things change and new things come into focus. If we are expecting our business to continue to flourish as it may have done once before by changing nothing, then think again. If you are at a plateau in the cycle thinking things will be ok, then map this against the rest of the world and you will soon see that you’re flat, or even slight growth looks dismal against the relative growth of the economy and new innovation of the markets.
Mapping your customer’s attention span or engagement to your product on a graph will show you the key places where the slumps are and when customers begin to move away to other brand or substitute products.
Any product life cycle has an initial hype cycle followed by a decline and plateau season. This is then followed by a slump of attention and purchases. Once again, mapping this out will detail the different trends and takeup from your customers.
The final graph to use is the business bell curve or life cycle. The bell curve clearly shows the early success, plateau and decline of a business. Every business goes through the same cycle, just the timing may differ. It is a wise and productive business owner who is able to manage this by innovating at the right time to lengthen the businesses lifespan as well as the customer’s attention and the product’s lifecycle.
Innovation does not need to be a huge change or revamp of your logo and change of corporate colours. It is often small regular changes to keep your brand fresh and top of mind for your customers.
Next blog we will look at the different types of innovation as we begin to unpack some of the things you can do for your business to keep it fresh and in business.