Innovation: what are you waiting for?

By Evelyn McDonald, CEO, Scottish EDGE

A key criteria of the Scottish EDGE competition is that there has to be innovation.  This is found most often in the product or service but can also be embodied in the approach, the team or the design or brand.

However, we recognise that developing an innovative product or service takes time, money and expertise which is why we frequently refer our applicants and alumni to Interface.

Interface matches companies to the correct academic expertise across Scotland allowing them to access equipment to test, create and develop ideas as well as offering funding opportunities to increase innovation.

Academic certification can help companies gain further funding and many Scottish EDGE winners have used Interface services before going on to win funding from our competition.

Craig Johnstone and Karsten Karcher founded Giglets in 2007 when they met through the Strathclyde Entrepreneurial Network at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Craig was in his first year studying International Business and Marketing and Karsten was an Enterprise Partner and Strathclyde PhD Alumnus.

Giglets Education has developed The Learning Cloud which is an innovative online, e-reading and learning platform. It holds a library of adapted classic stories known as SmartReads. Each SmartReads story delivers an enhanced experience through the use of animations, illustrations, music and read-along audio. The Cloud features learning resources tailored to the Curriculum for Excellence as well as task creation, management, marking and communication tools to assist school teachers in monitoring pupil’s progress.

Giglets applied for Scottish EDGE because they needed start-up capital. With feedback given at every stage of the competition they also felt they would benefit from valuable input as they developed their early stage business.

Winning ￡46,500 of EDGE funding in Round 2 of Scottish EDGE gave Giglets the breathing space they needed to take a step back when the business had to pivot. The business had previously spent 12 months on a model that wasn’t working for them and realised it made more sense to go down a web-based software route to cater to their target market. With EDGE funding they carried out vital market research and began to develop the correct product for their customer.  These vital decisions were supported by the project carried out with Interface.

Giglets used the Scottish Funding Council’s Innovation Voucher Scheme, which allowed them to work with academic experts within Dundee University and their school of education. The aim of the project was to research the impact of their offering on literary within the classroom which would help prove the benefits of the product to potential customers.

The aim of the Innovation Voucher Scheme is to fund projects  which drive innovation, leading to new products, services or processes that will benefit the company, university, research institution or further education college and the Scottish economy, such as securing or creating jobs, or allowing the company to expand into new markets.

When asked about working with Interface, Giglets founder Craig Johnston said, “Interface is a great way to get some academic research funded which can then lead to business leads and further commercialisation.  It also allowed us to reach a wide audience of expertise that we would not have been able to do by contacting each university ourselves. In 2016 we are hoping to double our company revenue to ￡0.5million turnover and grow our user base to in excess of 200,000 people. These results are partially due to the help and support of Interface”

Giglets are not the only Scottish EDGE company to use Interface to gain crucial academic certification. Round 2 Scottish EDGE winners and Round 5 YoungEDGE Winners, Coolside Ltd have been developing a new travel pillow concept for three years. They have now launched TRTL, which is the next generation of travel pillow. Coolside used the Scottish Funding Council’s Innovation Voucher Scheme which allowed them to work with academic experts within Dundee University to prove that TRTL provided better ergonomic support than a traditional, u-shaped memory foam pillow.

Recent EDGE Winners snap40 detect the early warning signs of avoidable deterioration in patient health, which are otherwise frequently missed, as in 35% of cardiac arrests.   Using a patent-pending wearable medical device, snap40 continuously monitors the health of a patient across a wide range of indicators, transmitting results wirelessly to snap40s proprietary software platform. snap40 approached Interface to help them find a university to help develop a sensor that would monitor hydration levels in patients. Interface identified University of the West of Scotland and facilitated a relationship between snap40 and UWS as well as helping snap40 to find the funding they needed to carry out the work. CEO of snap40 Christopher McCann said of the ongoing project “Interface were brilliant. We couldn’t have done this without their help”.

Other users of the Interface schemes are EDGE Winners Space Budgie, VH Innovation and Coast and Glen.  So, if you need some help developing your innovative product or service, what are you waiting for?

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Christopher McCann, Founder of snap40, will be sharing his experience of collaborating with academics at a workshop at the Scottish Knowledge Exchange Awards on 25 February.

There is still time to register : join us in a celebration of Scotland’s innovative academic-business partnerships.