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Business support spotlight: Innovation Clinic

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Our Business Support Spotlight series highlights the wealth of support listed on Boost’s Support Hub and available to Lancashire businesses. Today’s spotlight shines on UCLan’s Innovation Clinic.

How do you help Lancashire businesses?

We support SME’s to develop and enhance their business proposition, making them more competitive. Covering whole organisation improvements with a focus on new products, processes and services. Across sectors.

We specialise in innovation processes across mediums. From design engineering, product design to UX and UI. Our design expertise is supported by commercial experience that covers all operational areas.

Interventions are informed off rigorous research techniques and applied at any stage, from concept development through to sales and marketing. We tap into the breadth of the University’s knowledge areas offering further support, from Research, student talent or co-funding initiatives.

Why do Lancashire businesses need your support?

The commercial world is highly competitive, whether service, product or process it can always be improved. For competitive advantage on one hand and more efficient processes on the other.

Bringing a new product or service to market either as a start-up or established business it is not just process rigour that is required to be successful. It is the ability to identify the creative solution that can give a commercial  advantage. That’s why we are problem solvers, innovators at our core. We are highly experienced business development specialists and we cover all sectors.

We understand that it is the whole organisation that needs to be high performance and have the most up to date information and processes at their disposal.

  •  If they can’t see your product, they can’t buy it!
  •  If it is not easy to use, they will not adopt it!
  •  If it is expensive to produce, you will not be profitable!

How are you helping Lancashire businesses overcome the economic challenges of coronavirus?

Our service continues, we support virtually with little impact to our out-puts and the client outcome. It is more crucial now than ever to be flexible in how you bring a new product to market, traditional physical solutions are now challenged.

Within our specialisms we have virtual and web based solutions that cut across development steps through to 'to market' needs. The move to web and virtual interventions is one of our areas of expertise support. So we can help over come current market constraints.

What are the other key challenges for Lancashire businesses at the moment?

The isolation of home working or limited contact reduces the opportunity to explore new ideas and possibilities as isolation makes opportunities seem less tangible, raising barriers. Brexit and new rules around duty and conformity.

Therefore access to solutions ensuring conformity to the new country of Origin rules to maintain access and competitiveness to the UK’s biggest market is required. Especially with new product initiatives. Design and engineering solution’s need to be available to support decision making and appropriate outcomes to maintain profitable market access.

Support organisations can often seem large and not easy to access, we pride ourselves in that when sign-posted to us we can progress your opportunity because we have the skills and experience within the team and are connected to the broader University capability.

What’s the future for the Lancashire economy?

Creativity and problem solving sit at the heart of industrial and commercial opportunity. Lancashire has an abundance of this demonstrated over time. Teamwork and critical thinking and an entrepreneurial spirit needs to grasp technological advancement and the art of the possible, linked to the discipline and creativity needed to create economic growth.

The Innovation Clinic sits in UCLan’s Engineering Innovation Centre, giving it access to state of the art capabilities but more importantly the talent, capability and ingenuity of UCLan.

 

Looking for support to help grow your Lancashire business? Call 0800 488 0057 or complete our quick form and a member of the Boost team will be in touch to start your growth conversation.

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