How innovative companies can tackle their top growth challenges

Inno­vate UK EDGE’s region­al­ly-based inno­va­tion and growth spe­cial­ists have been the first port of call for thou­sands of such busi­ness­es look­ing to accel­er­ate their growth and scale. The ser­vice is a key part of the UK inno­va­tion agency Inno­vate UK’s invest­ment in busi­ness-led inno­va­tion. It offers high-poten­tial small and medi­um size com­pa­nies indi­vid­u­alised, impar­tial guid­ance and access to use­ful resources to enable them to thrive.

Senior inno­va­tion and growth spe­cial­ists Aldo De Leonibus and Viney Chauhan have pro­vid­ed lead­ers at some of the UK’s most pio­neer­ing com­pa­nies with inten­sive, fund­ed sup­port. They shared their expe­ri­ences of over­com­ing com­mon growth chal­lenges.

Tal­ent, inter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion, finance and mar­ket val­i­da­tion
Inno­vate UK EDGE clients are typ­i­cal­ly vision­ary teams work­ing to trans­form their indus­tries or soci­ety. As these com­pa­nies expand, an outsider’s per­spec­tive can help iden­ti­fy how to build out the team with com­mer­cial exper­tise to accel­er­ate growth.

Inno­vate UK EDGE helped TrakRap, a sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing com­pa­ny, to get the right peo­ple on board and scale.

“The tech­nol­o­gy was superb, but as a crit­i­cal friend we iden­ti­fied where some extra com­mer­cial exper­tise could spur rev­enue growth and also how to find that man­age­ment tal­ent,” says Chauhan.

De Leonibus acknowl­edges that it’s not always straight­for­ward: “It’s about chal­leng­ing lead­ers’ mind­sets. Deep down, they may know that changes are need­ed in the man­age­ment team, but they need to hear it from some­one they can trust.”

Regard­ing fund­ing and invest­ment, De Leonibus regards equi­ty finance as impor­tant for meet­ing scal­ing ambi­tions and always con­sid­ers how to enhance a client’s appeal to investors. But he men­tions caveats: “Equi­ty finance can be lever­aged to accel­er­ate busi­ness growth, but can be cost­ly if accessed too ear­ly. There are dif­fer­ent sources of fund­ing, such as grants, debt and R&D tax cred­its, that can help inno­va­tors along the way.”

Spe­cial­ists who know what makes inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies tick can help them find the right finan­cial vehi­cle. “We want to look at why you need the funds, what you’re hop­ing to achieve with them and appraise how much you actu­al­ly need. Then we will help you nego­ti­ate a com­plex land­scape.”

Inter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion also presents par­tic­u­lar chal­lenges. When Inno­vate UK EDGE worked with 3D LifePrints, it saw lim­it­less poten­tial. It pro­vides pio­neer­ing 3D print­ed med­ical devices, prod­ucts and ser­vices to cus­tomers includ­ing the NHS, research insti­tu­tions and the pri­vate sec­tor. Recent­ly for exam­ple, it devel­oped patient-spe­cif­ic sur­gi­cal guides for high­ly accu­rate bone sar­co­ma resec­tions.

“Busi­ness­es need to go where the fish are and for 3D LifePrints, this means North Amer­i­ca. But such inno­v­a­tive busi­ness­es face hur­dles there, in terms of an entire­ly dif­fer­ent set of med­ical device reg­u­la­tions and intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty con­sid­er­a­tions,” explains Chauhan.

Thank­ful­ly, Inno­vate UK EDGE has exten­sive con­nec­tions with asso­ciate spe­cial­ists in oth­er coun­tries to help enter such waters.

“Health­care is a par­tic­u­lar­ly reg­u­lat­ed field, but we have been able to help the busi­ness hone its approach to a sig­nif­i­cant new mar­ket.”

Last but not least, suc­cess­ful inno­va­tion means the wide­spread adop­tion of nov­el prod­ucts and ser­vices. It can be tempt­ing to hone the offer to per­fec­tion before tak­ing it to mar­ket, but Chauhan believes this could be part of the rea­son that so many of them fail. It’s far more impor­tant, he says, to pri­ori­tise devel­op­ment in col­lab­o­ra­tion with end users.

“When Drop­box launched, it had not yet been ful­ly devel­oped, but a short video helped it to gar­ner a wait­ing list of 70,000 peo­ple. It’s a good idea to edu­cate and engage peo­ple ear­ly, even if that means you expe­ri­ence some ini­tial embar­rass­ment.”

It appears that ‘fail fast’, part of a well-known mantra for dis­rup­tive busi­ness­es every­where, remains valid advice. Luck­i­ly, Inno­vate UK EDGE’s grasp of the details means that ambi­tious British inno­va­tors have some­where to turn to invert the sec­ond part of the mantra and ‘suc­ceed often.’

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it www.innovateukedge.ukri.org

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