Is the Innovation Advisory Service message getting through to medium companies? M Institute correspondent Joe Lickens investigates.
The Innovation Advisory Service, one of several business support initiatives funded by the South East England Regional Development Agency (SEEDA), was launched eighteen months ago and is highly regarded by those who have used it. However, it suffers from a lack of exposure: excellent the service may be, but companies need to have heard of it before they can take advantage of it.
Managed by Oxford Innovation and partnered with the National Physical Laboratory and CLIK (the technology transfer arm of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory), the IAS offers free or heavily subsidised support to companies of all sizes. However, so far, it appears to be predominantly small companies that seek help.
Claiming to act as a catalyst for growth for its clients, the IAS aims to help companies identify what to do, how to do it and how to gain access to resources and funding. Support is designed for companies that have an innovative service with which they want to move forward but for which they do not have the necessary resources.
Peter Adlington, managing director of Plastipack, a specialist manufacturer of energy and resource saving products, says that the IAS provided the company with a fast route to the market and helped "to source experts in particular fields which we have problems in. For example, if we have a problem in R&D they can look for someone who is good in that field."
For Plastipack, the IAS's partnership with the National Physical Laboratory was especially useful: the introduction of the "Smart Approved Watermark" scheme in Australia had threatened to push the company out of the market but, with the NPL's help, Plastipack succeeded in proving that it met the standard.
The IAS encourages companies to adopt an Open Innovation framework, so that they can develop "the cross fertilisation of ideas and opportunities within and outside the client organisation". Take, for example, telecommunications equipment manufacturer and service provider Ericsson, who came to the IAS for a way into the UK small business sector. Ericsson met with eight companies with a view to either injecting extra resources into new concepts or using their own route to bring concepts to the market. In the end, three proposals were presented to the market.
It certainly seems that the IAS has proved beneficial for the companies that have used it so it's a shame that there aren't more companies aware of what is on offer. Not that the IAS is by any means alone in its obscurity: according to the M Institute's Empowering Medium Enterprise study, only 14% of all businesses knew anything at all about the functioning of Britain's regional development agencies.
Hopefully this situation is soon to change. Nicholas Bojas of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) thinks that, with all of the government funded advisory services, "there is a problem in that there are so many different schemes available". He believes, however, that the Business Support Simplification Programme, which aims to reduce the complexity of business support from around 3,000 schemes to fewer than 100 by 2010, will solve this.
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