Innovation-as-a-Service

Innovation is not for everybody - it is only for those who feels that there is something missing!

Mantra: First you copy then you innovate on it - you will need a to give yourself a timeframe.

Innovation-as-a-Service through "Your demand, we Innovate for you" is an Innovation on Demand platform to help corporates to leap frog ahead of their competitors by way of introducing new products or services - Innovation in Product Design & Solutions to leap ahead of your competitors. And yes, we do not use ChatGPT to help generate ideas. People often ask ‘why do I have to innovate’ especially for those who had achieved a slight level of success. Unfortunately for them, they should know that innovation is a business process to revitalise what they have to offer and there is no better example than the one that Nokia went through – they were successful in being the leader of smart phones but because they did not innovate fast enough, they ultimately met their demise. “Innovation” is the juice to out beat your competitors – not only that, if you do not want to innovate or if you fail to innovate, you will be feeling excruciating pain when you find that your neighbours had leap frog in front of you. If you were to ask Kodak what they went through after losing the battle to be leader of film camera producer, you will come off with the feeling that you should not be the one in their shoes. So innovation should be the top item in your mind, never mind whether you could do it or not - � once you have it in your mind, you will unconsciously be creative to pursue innovation.

But just discovering what to innovate is not enough because everyone else is also looking at the subject - they will always be a feeling that the other guy is moving into something big. Innovation must always come a step ahead of the competitions, so it is always good to envision a step ahead of what is available. Your great visioning power will help you to see what is not yet available from the market. So dream on as there is nothing better to do - day dreaming to be exact. Did the Kodak engineers not dreamed of the day where they would not have to use films to capture images? Well, they did and they even went to develop it as a prototype - but sad to say that their corporate leaders did not buy into it as they would have feared that it would cause tremendous harm to their existing business. However, technology moves on and waits for no men - envisioning new technologies will be the new game. You might want to get a little help from a third party as it is always difficult to think out of the box just because you will be too familiar (old adage - familiarity breeds conntempt) with what you already have.

Innovation Processes

Discovery – the discovery stage is where you identify what needs to innovate - it is never easy due to the fact of familiarity. The identifying process is the most important aspect to be able to innovate. You will need to identify what to innovate and thence focus on it but saying it is easy and doing it is a herculean task. First, find out if there is a problem and thence go about finding why that problem comes about. If it is a product, then throw it to your team (if you have one) and challenge them to rectify the problem. This stage might take a while as there will be many testing to be done – after which you will need to suggest a solution. Then you go to the next step which is prototyping. The same goes for intangible solutions.

Prototyping

Prototyping might sound exciting because you will first need to suggest many solutions where some of them might not fit into the scheme of things – where it is too complicated to execute and too costly for the market like you have to incorporate AI. Try to start a simple prototype first – and go about improving it as you go along. Also bear in mind that if you were to make it, there will be issues with the designs and productions. But before going into further refining, it is always good to show your prototype to those that are targeted to use them – you will get more feedbacks and opinions that you were not aware of before – designers and users often have different views.

Go-to-market

The innovation process continues as you go to the market – you might have a product that needs to be sold through a different way. Indeed, when we go to the market, we are always not sure whether there will be acceptance or not. What happens when the go to market process does not shine? That is where changes will have to be made, either on the product itself or the way the product is sold. There is this process of real time fine tuning which will need a lot of feedbacks from both the producers and users. Even when the go to market process is deem successful, it will do well to think about the future path as you will get competitors coming from all angles as soon as it is ascertained that you have a successful product – you can’t evade from competitions but you can strife to be a leader in which case you will need more innovations.

Why is it so difficult to innovate?

Even though corporate leaders know that innovation is the most important thing to do in a corporate environment, it is hard to come by because nobody is specifically task with the job – there might be smart ideas coming out from the employees but there is no body to go around and formally ask about them. It’s really come to be a cultural thing something that is not written in the script. C.E.Os.’ know about the need for regeneration to survive but generally does not have the initiative to go about it – until they are faced with competitors pushing their way in front by introducing innovative offerings. Innovation is a culture that needs to be taught by people who had innovated before – it is unfortunate that it is not taught in business schools. Before we even smell innovations, we will need a bit of organising; forming a group combining of people with smart ideas and those who are good at goading – good at convincing others that their ideas will contribute to the survival of the enterprise. But it is true that people will move to address it only when it has become a problem – why make change the thing is still good. The other reason why there is so little of innovations is that people will not act until they have gathered information on a problem forwarded by users of the goods. So having a department whose job is to gather feedbacks from the market is crucial to initiate innovations, be they from within the house or from a third party that is entrusted with the task to innovate.

Innovations Alive

Innovations can come in the form of tangibles or intangibles. You can have innovations in products, services, networks, processes, product performances and customer engagements. Here we use Innovation Analytics to analyse how to make you more innovative in terms of products and services that will help you to sprint ahead of the competitions. So avail yourself to our unique inventor-lead Innovation-as-a-Service platform to change things and thus enabling you to move ahead of your dreaded competitors

Innovation is the juice to revitalisation which will harbinger a new generation. Revitalisation is essential for a company that have been going to war for a long time – going to compete head to head with your neighbour. You will not only need vitality to go the full journey but also perseverance of the highest order. But if you have been pushing the same old product then you will find that you would be asking yourself whether you should abandon it for something newer – that is where innovation will do you wonders. Still, it is not every day that you will come to meet with innovations because you will need to first feel for the need to innovate – innovations that come from an in-house team or from an outside party. However it is always a better choice to source your new blood from outside as it would cost you less – forming a creative team from within your household might not be able to pull off the rabbit from your hat.

Innovations help improve our living standards. Innovation is the starting point of where we become more efficient – this is important because we have been over burning our resources to enjoy a comfortable life. With the realisation of climatic change, we will have to do things that will result in a less carbon footprint and that is to run our life without burning fossil fuel. For that we will have to rely on creating new products that run on a more efficient mode to that of those which had been invented years ago. We will also have to look at our supply chains and to see where we need to cut off those stages that are redundant. What we consume and how we consume becomes important as some of those old ways should be amended because we can no longer afford it as we are reaching the seven billion mark of population. In fact we are no more having that luxury of spending like there is no tomorrow. Innovations will come to assist us to break into a world that will be considered green and the more innovation the better – we should be proud to leave this legacy for our future descendants.

Today's business is all about big data, business intelligence and analytics and how to make gain of it, or is it not? You would be wrong if you think software program can help you with your business prowess because to be innovative is about using a new way of doing something - and it is definitely not a new way to present information! Who should we rely to bring about innovations? A wise woman once advised that you should not be obsessed being trying to be innovative - you should instead leave it to those who are born innovative. So don't waste time, just leave innovation to the innovative guy - that is us (a team of inventors and innovators). Period.

Yes, you are reading it right. Leave innovation to people with innovation skills. We are here to help you knock off that innovative solution for you so that you can concentrate on what you can do best and not wasting your time pondering over some statistics churned out from the web. Point to note is that an innovative idea comes from a spontaneous reaction when confronted with a problem. The problem is always "how can you do it better" or "have you got any idea" sorts of thing. Most managers would have agreed that it is because they are not innovative than the next guy when they are queried about why they are experiencing stagnating sales.

Why is innovation important in business?

The worst case scenario of doing business has to face competitions – you will not have the craving to eat because your mind will be taken up by all the thinking of how to beat your competitors. Indeed, most businessmen are often bogged down by thinking of ways of how to beat their competitors instead of spending their time of thinking about ways to improve their revenue. One of the reasons that they fall into this quagmire is because they did not give enough thoughts to what they want to do. It is just like the case of people picking up the first flower they met knowing well that they would have made a better choice if they were to go scout around. You would then be better off if you were to spend some time going innovating your product or services before you go plunging into your business. It’s all about innovation – the more unique the better.

But surely there are many tools that we can use to create innovation - or is it! How about all those analytics program that with the use of a click you will be presented with insights and thus you would be able to innovate your way around!

In truth, there is not much of a use if we only depend on these newly fanged programs to seek for new insights for we cannot depend on machines to give us a spark. Just be aware that the next guy out there will also get access to those algorithm churned statistics - it is either statistics, bar charts or the must have trend chart.

Still scratching your head?

Well, if you are inclined to be different then we have the new "Innovation Analytics" to help you to spark new insights, something that will be different from each other. We offer you this unique opportunity because we are doing it differently from the other party and we are sure that you will get your own highway to pursue, far off from those who you consider as your neighbourly competitor!

How are we unique?

Here is why we are different. Besides having to rely on Big Data and Analytics, we also use human intelligence (and not artificial intelligence) to help spark off that unique idea. Yes, although we also go out there to spy on the latest trends, using new-fangled toys like artificial intelligence and data analytics, we however also use human intelligence in our brain storming sessions to get new working ideas. Whatever we come up with must have that tinge of innovativeness otherwise we would be too shy to offer out suggestions to our clients. Sparking ideas is our forte as we are all inventors so the solution from us will be unique and not like those that are churned from algorithms. However, we do need machines and programs to cut short our time to get to the innovation - so that our client will benefit from real fast innovations. Innovations from us must have that spark of surprise as it is often the outcome of a brilliant spark, something more often like a think out of the box and certainly contrarian in nature.

Here is a short brief of how we spark innovation for you

We will first do an analytics of what you have to offer. Your products and services: how innovative when compared to your competitors or market leader. Then we will hold a brainstorm session among our team of inventors who are industry experts. New ideas are generated and discussed among the inventors and market experts. Then a viable idea is solidified. We will then offer you the new idea. If you accept it, then we will further evolve the idea into a product or service and will present it to you for acceptance. Our ideas do not come from computer programs - it is innovated through the minds of our team of inventors and market experts. On most occasions we also tap on the experts from other countries - we have a large base of experts. This is how we do innovations, the kind that is sparked off from humans. Machines only come into play during the initial stage where we have to sieve through the available data from the public domain. What you get is an intelligent solution churned off from experts.

We would like to talk about visualization - the kind that you see in your mind. Visualization is more of an art and you get better at it after practising it for some time. In the process of innovation, you will need to hold the idea in your mind - but not only that you will need to visualize how it works. But before you can visualize how it works, you will have to be creative, that is you will need to always want to be unique. If you are inclined to be lazy as a large number of people are, you will always want others to think for you. And you would be a follower instead of being a creator. So before you can innovate, you will need to fill those shoes or at least feel you want to lead. That is why although many can talk about being innovative only a few will be able to deliver it.

Our innovative sparks are often tied to our many years of experience in the market place. You will not get any better from that smart guy who had been tingling with codes of solutions. A solution from the algorithm is more often than a staid cluster of charts and trends. Talking about trends, we will need to access the social network to get insights, no doubt but we will need to access whether the idea can be profitably made because if otherwise, it would not pass master when we are talking about how to market it. We also take into consideration market sense and perhaps also the logistics of where it is made. Want to get a preview of what we have for you and your company? Get in touch with us soon before the crowd comes charging. To tell the truth, we cannot handle mass adoption like machines as we still have to depend on human brains to bring about innovations.

The end point of our Innovation-as-a-Service | Innovation on Demand is that it will give you a new fresh direction to pursue - be it in tangible products or intangible service. In these troubled times, people are forever asking themselves what to do - do I need to conceive new products or perhaps I should re-engineer my method of service to better suit the time. Then again you are worried about your neighbours who might leap past you without you knowing what the reason was!

But first of all what is the value of patents?

To the manufacturer, a patent which it holds is more of a security issue because it is a form of protection from others manufacturing the same thing. The holder of the patent could also not involve in the manufacturing – he instead licenses it out to those who have the means to make it. To the big corporates, holding more patents is also a marketing exercise to show to the world that they are worth investing – you can acquire their shares in the market. In this way, they can be assured of enough capital to go on an expansion without the need to go to their bankers to appeal for funds. To the small guy who normally only holds a few patents, they will need to play it right by also seeking others to have a cross licensing so that they could also use some of the technologies that they don’t have – it is advisable to have many cross links as a deterrent from being sued for infringements. Then there are trolls and sharks that might come knocking at your door when they smelled that they can make some money out of your hard work. So holding patents is not a simple equation but something that you will need experience to be a player because patents is also equated with your survival, whether you like it or not.

Where would you expect to see tangible innovations post covid-19?

The ever changing world - and where you will find innovations

The group Thomson Reuters IP & Science, after having looked at the scientific journal literature and patent applications of the present moment had these predictions about innovations:

Dementia

The World Health Organization expects the number of cases to triple by 2050 but according to Thomson Reuters reading, and because there is an elevated focus on dementia, "In 2025, the studies of genetic mutations causing dementia, coupled with improved detection and onset-prevention methods, will result in far fewer people suffering from this disease" – which will mean there will be a whole slew of devices designed to cater to help dementia patients to better cope with live on their own even though they have achieve partial cure after treatments. We will not forget that we will be living with Covid-19 as well which will bring a whole new world of touch-less devices and buildings that are able to reduce the spread of diseases – not forgetting that you will have to redesign all you ventilation systems including how you get yourself a cooled air.

Food shortages

The prediction is No more food shortages – this is due to man's unwavering search for more efficiencies to food production. Genetically modified crops come to mind. The other more efficient way of producing food crop is to use round the clock growing of vegetables and fruits in the urban setting – things like vertical farming aquaponics. Deep sea fish farming which is popular in China will help us to move towards a better food basket without having to sacrifice our land space. Then there is the issue of food preparation - there is a huge amount of waste arising from the present method of processing food. An alternative way is to use 3D printing to create food (from raw materials) at a double quick time, and not only that, we can also use lasers to micro-cook it to perfection without having to waste oil and energy while doing so. This will bring about a whole new game to food production and food processing - with the view to have better production efficiency.

Plastic garbage that has gone to the oceans

No more plastic waste – something that scientists have been racing each other to come up with plastics that are totally biodegradable – and even edible plastics at a cost that we can absorb. But for it to succeed, we will have to collect back all those waste that have landed up in the oceans and there will be cost added to it – not to deny that corporates will be task to handle it as part of their corporate culture.

Tourism Matters

As a result of the Covid pandemic, tourism or the tourism industry have been severely affected by the lockdowns – creations of aircraft graveyards is one of the manifestations of a downed industry. Pilots were forced to take up Uber jobs and tourism players were forced to shuttle their premises for lack of visitors and the list goes on. Realising that there will always be a threat to your business, tourism players must go for a backup plan as you can never tell that our lives will be severely affected by some new forms of pathogens. People were forced to stay home because the air is full of viruses – and there don't seem to be a way to take out these pathogens. Airlines have almost come to a halt but with the opening of borders, the airlines are running on a shortfall of manpower - even though it is not safe to be in an airplane because of its inadequate ventilation system. Backup plans will include tourism players taking up other side business – there is a great potential for virtual realities and an immersed tourism journeys that the players can conceive and deploy through online methodologies. You have been exposed to the new normal – well, the new normal is that you don’t have to travel to far off destinations to relax as you can do it right from your home. As things have to change to suit the situation, there will be plenty of innovations for the tourism players to indulge in.

No more office - possible because of the pandemic

To be frank, an office environment is not the safest place to be in view of the spread of diseases. We have tolerated this far as we are used to having bad office syndrom - epitomised by the seasonal influenza period. It just take somebody to sneeze in the office and you will find the rest of the staffs taking sick leaves a few days after - which has a cost to it that we have tolerated enough. Looking at the days ahead as we are entering the era of Covid endemic, it will do us good if only we can take the office out of our picture - we were doing fine working from home during the pandemic. We could do better if we can wean off the need to go to the office to do work. The no office thing looks exciting - we must try to embrace it in order to save the world from burning more fuel moving our way towards the office and returning! It would be a great time to be a working mother working from home! Surely there will be plenty of innovations to help us embrace this concept - which is not a new one.

Energy

The world will face a different environment when we no longer put our energies in searching for those fossil treasures – we will pay more attention to decarbonising our world, what more with more efficient solar panels that we can paint them on. Wind farms over the ocean is a big industry and with it there will be more ways of extracting wind energy over the shores – it will be integrated with our lifestyles whether we want it or not as we are running out of land to settle. And what about fusion?

Communications

5G, 6G and what not – it will change our lives and also change the way we communicate with each other – we might be able to throw our thoughts through the air via teleportation and the end for hand phones!

Now for the intangibles?

The field is wide but the most important of which is how do you go about selling?

V-Bloggs, Live Streaming like those that have taken over the likes of Alibaba? What about Pinduoduo where the clients are the kingmaker? And to make it really up to date, Artificial Intelligence is used to run most of everything, including the use of AI to answer your queries - as well as to teach.

Education

Education as we know it has been gravely affected by the pandemic what not with school closing to prevent spread of virus. Fortunately for us education can be conducted through online when the schools are closed. But we are not used to online education, especially for those who are in the rural areas because pupils cannot afford wireless equipment - there is a great divide between urban and rural folks. The education system is not based on online teaching and has not been tuned to online systems. There will be a need of funds to change the system and those funds are not in sight at the moment - we will need to teach the teachers as well as the students to help them embrace online courses. Just imagine how nice it would be if instead of a teacher you have a machine to do the teaching - made possible by artificial intelligence and machine learning. We would be able to save a huge amount of money to have teachers trained and building of schools. Anyway, a lot of tertiary courses are conducted through the internet and there is no reason why the education system could not be changed to suit the situation. So we could expect a lot of ideas coming to rescue us from having to spent huge amount of funds to set up teaching of teachers and setting up of physical schools - yes, you read right, there will be many innovations as far as education is concerned.

How to sell your innovation?

You are the boss.

If you are the boss of the organisation, then when you want to sell your innovation to the rest of your employee would seem to be easy – as they would not dare to object. Yes, but in truth, the selling of an idea is fraught with problems, some of them you least expect and that goes for the boss too. Innovations if brought to its full course have a great impact; some of them are on the negative side. When change is brought about, there would be sceptic people waiting on the side just to pounce on its negative outcome whenever given the chance. So even if you are the boss, you would not be able to escape the wrath of the public and your employees if such a situation were to arise. But whatever the discourse, innovation must be part of the power play in order to better compete with the rest of the company.

If you are the employee who is tasked to sell the innovation – and one of the meekest kind around for that matter?

That would be a gigantic task for you would probably face a hell fire from the rest of your colleagues – as making a successful selling of your idea would need you to be brave enough to face whatever onslaughts. But then selling your idea would bring about survivability of your organisation – and thus also meaning your survival at the organisation. Selling is a professional job for you will need to understand human psychology – that of your colleagues and boss. So before you go about selling your idea, you would be better off to do a bit of discovery about the characters of those who you are about to sell. If possible track those who are of having the belligerent characters – as they would be the one who shout the loudest but with the least intelligence. And you would need to be the best salesman on the block – assisted with a slew of info graphics to help better explain your point. At the end, be ready to be side-line for future endeavours – collateral damage (which could include us as well).

Why Innovate?

Simply put Innovations bring about Opportunities. And who would not want opportunity in these times of great upheavals –brought about by Covid-19 pandemic. The Covid pandemic brought about lockdowns and disruptions of supply chains. As a result of supply chain disruptions, you now have food shortages, spare part shortages and the hoarding of electronic parts like microchips. Inflation in the light of short supplies can bring about down trend of the economy as people refrain from buying. Then you have oil price increase which will also put a damper to spending and not forgetting that we have to get enough of Covid vaccines to immunise the whole of society. It is in these times of uncertainty that you will need to innovate – both tangible and intangibles. For the tangibles, you will also need to plan for its testing and marketing and for the intangibles; you will need to recruit more digital technologies as well as putting a sum of money to move towards a degree of large consumption.

But most of all you need a certain degree of innovation to help sustain your business. There is this trend of moving into new things – like fashion. But innovations alone will not bring you far because you will also need the people, trained or untrained to help promote it, not forgetting that you will also need a budget to go out and compete with the unknowns – you never know whether you will get a competitor in the field. Innovations do come fraught with dangers – you might have to give it up if it does not bring you success. So there is a cost to it, a cost for R&D, a cost for promotion and a cost to run the whole show – also answerable to your shareholders. The last thing is that innovations must be market driven. You do not want to introduce something that is ahead of its time as you will need to wait for the time when the consumers are ready for it – so you need an innovation with foresight, not to look too far into the future, but just enough to pick the interest of the public.

Innovations knows no bounds

Innovations could come from all angles and they might come from the place you least expect. Take the case of scientist inserting algae into the blood vessels of tadpoles – would you have thought about it? Well, it seems that inserting algae into the blood vessels can help improve the level of oxygen and that could be a life and death episode – it seems that the algae which is capable of photosynthesizing is helping to increase the level of oxygen! That figures but that was what inspired Hans Straka, a German scientist who was discussing the topic of photosynthesis during a lunch conversation with a botanist. What happens next was the insertion of photosynthesising algae into the tadpoles bold vessel – the beating tadpole’s translucent vein gradually turns green and did produce oxygen! You get new insights from another’s input but how do you use the input is entirely up to your ingenuity – innovative people think of all angles and possibility, not to be deterred by others calling them foolish. There is indeed plenty of innovative ideas growing among people but it is another thing to put in practise. One of the use of this technology is perhaps the need for oxygen by a Covid infected patient who needs to be intubated - maybe inserting algae into the blood vessel may help!

Pre-emptive strategy for the next Innovation

For what your competitor do you will need to do better than them as you strategize to beat the competition? Often enough you will be stunted by the way your competitor brought about innovations, be it in the product or the way they sell them. Your knee jerk reaction is often to bring up your team to discuss how to go forward – of course you need a better innovation than the other guy. But like all endeavours you will really need to keep thinking to come up with a solution and fast. Unless your company has instituted a culture of innovation in your team, you will need help from an exterior source to solve the problem fast. New products that is better than the competition is an issue not to be afraid off. Good ideas are out there for you to find if you would want to but outsourcing will be the easiest way if you are able to spot them. We at Patentagentip will help you to pre-empt the competitors to come up with a viable cost effective product and at a cost that is reasonable without you against about coming out with the solution. Pre-emptive Strategy on innovation is your source for going forward in this world of competition and we are here to help you.

What if you fail?

One of the most important traits of an innovative person is the way they treat failures. To them, there is noting that they cannot achieve – they are the do hard. What if you were to fail? Well, why do you have to be afraid of failure for as long as you believe in something, you will go on to redo it, maybe in a different way; that is the strongest trait of a go getter. Innovations come about by you putting together different things to do a job. Be it in physical or intangible forms, innovation is more like an experiment – you continue to do it until it is just right for your preference. For those who are shy of failure, then don’t attempt to create for you will suffer in silence with nobody ready to pat your back urging you to try again. But let it be known that doing innovations is not for the timid. You have to have that trait call never say no - it is always a yes even if it takes a lifetime. And innovation will not come about if you don’t have the guts to face the public for when you fail, people will throw stones at you. However an innovative person would not wilt under the attack but will be driven to be even more passionate about the thing that he or she does.

Are there Pure Innovations?

Pure innovations, if they come about are indeed rare as like inventions it is always a little bit of improvement on an existing idea – small improvements for a better efficiency. Innovations come about by the combination of two different things or two different ways of doing things (when combines, it is more efficient) - that is normally how innovation come about. So if you want to be innovative, then the simplest way is to combine two different things (or objects) into one and go to make it work, purportedly in a more efficient way. As physical things have their limitations like they have to obey the law of physics it would goes to say that it is more difficult (according to our mind) to combine two things (or even three) together. It is however easier to combine two intangibles to make them work better like for example your UBER or Airbnb. Still, we should try to inculcate pure innovations as they are worth its weight in gold – and the result may not ring any bell but at least it will bring us to another angle.

What now for post-covid and not to even mention the Ukraine-Russian conflict?

It seems that you have no other choice because of the impending recession coming starting 2023. A very simple advice is to take a look at what you don't have with respect to your competitors and you would want to list it down for further actions. Just in case you are overwhelmed with all these negatives, it would be a good suggestion if you were to go to a third party to sort things out. An outside view will definitely give you a new perspective because it is always difficult to have a new view because you are in most probability very much engrossed with familiarity – you do not see the forest for the trees. Yes, go do something different – go see an expert on innovation!

You might want to take a look at how we can help you spark your innovation - we spark the innovation and you get to enjoy the new innovation journey!

Or, you might want to take a look at our fast Innovation-On-Demand

Or, you might want to learn about how to innovate

Do give us a thinker if you need an extra helping hand.