More awards!!! - success speaks for itself

Success at the WaterAid APP. Challenge Awards

+ADD have been supporting an initiative to design a working mobile app which helps volunteer hygiene promoters to working in under developed and remote parts of the world!  Our submission won a national category award.

The team was instrumental in coordinating the consortia's response to Water AID's challenge.  As part of the project +ADD secured sponsorship and assistance from Nutshell (a novel software platform enabling mobile app development with no coding expertise).  Further +ADD's team organised workshops to co-create and design the APP with NWG staff.

Ana (NWG). Scott (Nutshell) and Peter (+ADD). Many cups of coffee later...an APP is born.

The resultant APP enables scheduling and management of field projects, as well as coordination of volunteers.  Further the volunteers (typically local community members) can access an easy to use hygiene audit.  The audit is designed to deliver insight over several visits, and to engage participants directly through the interface, mapping progress and highlighting areas in which practical assistance might be needed.

For more information please contact Fiona at +ADD.

Successful sprint / hack fusion initiative catches national attention

Recently +ADD delivered a fusion project which saw delivery of an integrated sprint and hack.  The programme attracted over 160 participants from very diverse backgrounds.

The initiative was an integrated design challenge around leakage which was sponsored by Northumbrian Water and Microsoft.  The process and results have been highlighted by various organisations in national press and media including the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC), OfWat and British Water.

See more in this attached video:

Innovate FAST and LEAN - but +ADD strategic direction, purpose and genuine experience

Agile and design led innovation is all the rage.  Everyone is 'jumping on the bandwagon and reading the 5 day sprint book and giving it a go.

We admit it - its true ...we harness unbound enthusiasm and commitment to gain real results.  The +ADD team are unashamedly having no less than 'tonnes of fun' running agile and design led hacks, sprints and innovation challenges.  You can see more about this side of our work HERE

We are genuinely passionate about the adoption of new faster quicker and better modes of innovation practice and creating new methods.  Given this the +ADD team also work carefully and with method to deliver practical, impactful solutions and end results. 

We work with diverse teams and communities to discover deep insight, define true missions and co-discover genuine solutions.

Our team is committed to this goal - it is our principle purpose and not a side-line.   We are completely focussed on genuine innovation, solving hard problems and making the right propositions come to life with our clients. 

Our people often co-locate and work from within clients offices for days, weeks, months.  Some clients provide us with team titles and dedicated email addresses.  We are truly part of the team if not the business.

New solutions created through +ADD's work have gone on to be implemented and even win national awards.

We work as innovation partners and present clear roadmaps and work alongside internal teams with resource to see initiatives through conclusion.

Our team includes expertise and practical experience in culture change, transformation and service innovation, strategic marketing and insight, innovation management and commercialisation.

 

 

Building foundations on solid ground...genuine insight

Extensive pre-work enables us to define organisational context, commercial objectives, goals and develop practical understanding of barriers to innovation. 

We consider patent landscapes, existing and alternative R&D, other relevant innovation initiatives and competitive activities as part of our early approach.

In preparation for co-creation of new offers; we have recently been helping a client in subsea understand market dynamics and drivers effecting demand for their products.

Peter Chalder Wood, an engineer turned marketer, tech. transfer practitioner has been leading this particular initiative.  The research work alone has included extensive desk research, workshops with technical experts, insights with fleet operators and asset specifiers, data analytics and development of statistical market models.

Dedication and commitment to achieving clients goals on time sometime means working long hours and lots of coffee. 

This kind of work on advanced technology's, complex propositions influenced by 'global to local' factors, changing market structure and complex application drivers requires experience in strategic technology marketing and practical commercial understanding.

In preparation for several recent open innovation programmes we have secured sponsorship, grants and supply chain contributions. 

Our work has seen us building consortia, establishing principle terms for IP governance and enabling collaborative developments.

Unbound enthusiasm and commitment to ideas has its place, it is from experience an essential ingredient. However the recipe is complex, it varies and successful innovation is not simply about the winning idea.

So, if you work in a complex market, and are working to solve hard problems with wining solutions... If you are seeking to co-create market led innovations in complex and rapidly changing markets...

Get in touch with peter@addstrategy.co.uk to explore out how we can assist. 

If its after 5, don't worry, ...he's probably still hard at work...

+ADD asked to host megasprint at the NE Festival of Innovation

The team will be hosting a design sprint to consider and creatively respond to one of the largest issues in the water industry this summer.  20% of potable water produced in the U.K. Is lost through leakage before it reaches your tap! 

 +ADD will be drawing expertise from across the country to identify the fastest way of achieving a reduction with over 60 guests attending from diverse backgrounds.

 'this is a real honour, huge effort goes into this arena from teams and experts across the industry.  We will focus on short term gains and business cases for investment'

Paul Sutherland FCIM, Senior Associate  

The event ran for 4 days from the 10-14 July at Newcastle Racecourse.  The event will also see talks and problem solving from IBM, Reece Group and others exploring major water industry challenges.  

The event itself was held at Newcastle Racecourse in July and saw a wide range of Utilities, supply chain companies and communities collaborating to solve major issues and explore opportunities together such as Leakage, Flooding and others. 

Our work included supporting a hackathon, developing and delivering a major sprint, launching and delivering two national STEM competitions for young people.  Over the week we engaged over 240 participants in our initiatives including 62 companies, 7 schools and recruitment of 2 sponsors a range of high profile industry and public sector leaders.

We also facilitated a forum on barriers to innovation for a national body.

Our work saw creation of diverse human focussed solutions to reduce network leakage ranging from integrated sensors and deployment systems, map informatics for prioritising works, new 'lab in a box' field analytics tools and even consumer facing awareness and engagement programmes.

Following the success of the event we are now we are working with the NWG team to progress concepts and prototypes established in the initiative.  We are also continuing to work on a host of other innovation programmes. 

Paul is asked to talk at PraxisUnico

Senior associate Paul Sutherland has been asked to talk at PraxisUnico, the international conference for technology commercialisation specialists.

Paul, who is a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing has been invited to present with Durham and Oxford universities and will be helping TTO's explore how best to develop their marketing communication strategies.

Collaborations and mergers as instruments of reform in education

See on Scoop.it - innovation in vocational education

Insights and thoughts from +ADD’s work in the education sector.

paul sutherland ’s insight:

Are mergers an opportunity to rethink, as well as streamline costs?  What new form educational organisations and relationships can we expect to see in the coming years in and across the Higher and Further education sectors? 

See on linkedin.com

Innovation Excellence | From Creativity to Profitability - Innovation Excellence (blog)

See on Scoop.it - Thoughts from +ADD Strategy

It sounds intuitive that creativity and innovation are important to company success, but when the corporate world focuses so intensely on the “bottom line”, is there a real impact of creativity on company profitability that would justify a shift of…

paul sutherland ’s insight:

Despite the percieved risk, cost and disruption; research shows innovative companies that drop products as margins decline in favour of new products are consistently making better sustained profits. Apple generates more than 60% of its revenue from products that did not exist 4 years ago! 

“Those who live by the sword… … are SHOT by those who don’t” (Gary Hamel of Strategos)

See on innovationexcellence.com

A BRICS University in the works: Russia

See on Scoop.it - innovation in vocational education

Both the UK and US universities are heavily dependent on the BRICS, especially China and India, for their international numbers.

paul sutherland ’s insight:

Does the scale of collaborative investment in a this network BRICS H.E. institute and domestic education system demonstrate concerted government efforts to reduce the numbers of their students wanting to attend UK and other non BRICS universities?

See on thebricspost.com

Members of +ADD team are national 'Business Growth Services' advisors

Members of +ADD are now able to access grant funding to support client work under the Business Growth Services programme operated by PERA.  As regional coaches .

For new Business Growth Service clients there is grant funding available for Leadership & Management Training.   In addition to our expertise in business growth you can access  support for Intellectual Property Audits and Design Mentoring which is delivered by Design Coaches from the Design Council and the broader GrowthAccelerator community.
 
Design Mentoring is a high impact form of support which demonstrates how any business can benefit from its powerful influence to develop long-term opportunities for growth.

you can find out more by contacting us directly (paul@addstrategy.co.uk), or by looking at these sites:

GrowthAccelerator: www.ga.businessgrowthservice.greatbusiness.gov.uk/

Manufacturing advisory service (MAS): www.mas.businessgrowthservice.greatbusiness.gov.uk/

The future of H.E...a storm is coming!

See on Scoop.it - Thoughts from +ADD Strategy

The future of Higher Education - Speakers at Conference say …a storm is coming!Perhaps it was the scale of audience, mix of speakers or simply the timing, but the ‘Future of Higher education conference’ yesterday at Salford University was certainly enlightening and gave air to some radical thinking.Several sector leaders including representatives from NCUB, AOC and JISC, universities and colleges spoke out about the need for acceleration in value creation, growth in commercial provision, income diversification, as well as the need to focus on better integration of p

See on linkedin.com

Why online communities are undervalued – and often fail

See on Scoop.it - Thoughts from +ADD Strategy

Online communities are not given the attention they deserve by businesses. Here is why they should and why online communities often fail.

paul sutherland ’s insight:

An interesting insight.  I often feel those who sell online community concepts sell just that…empty shell services with too little support to effectively build, nourish and maintain a viable and useful scale of engagement.  Those who sell these platforms need to step up to the mark!

See on i-scoop.eu

Former Saatchi and Saatchi Vice Chairman unveils Teesside Uni national business hub

See on Scoop.it - Thoughts from +ADD Strategy

Former Saatchi and Saatchi Vice Chairman unveils Teesside Uni national business hub | Entrepreneurship | North East | Bdaily UK | Business News

See on bdaily.co.uk

OpenBadges Taxonomies

See on Scoop.it - innovation in vocational education

In a previous post (Over 2 millions of badge types…) I explored the typology of Open Badges and the idea of a taxonomy to conclude to the inanity of any attempt at enumerating the different types of Open Badges. Recently, while discussing with a colleague the ideas developed in this previous post, she reminded me of […]

paul sutherland ’s insight:

I love Serge Ravet’s take on the world of Open Badges.  He is a leading light on th ework being done in Italy.  He is the Director of Innovation at ADPIOS is the organiser of ePIC, the International ePortfolio & Identity Conference (www.epforum.eu).

See on learningfutures.eu

A new report on comparative LEP 'SME digital skills strategies'...Just in case you missed it!

See on Scoop.it - Thoughts from +ADD Strategy

This LEP survey report offers great insight into different approaches to raising basic digital skills levels and comparative views on the challanges faced.

You can find the link here: http://bit.ly/1FuJpbS

No great shocks on the needs of small businesses being very diverse; from using social media to promote their business and connect with new customers to taking payments and protecting themselves from fraud and storing digital information on suppliers and customers.

Regards barriers to progress, there is as you would expect reflection on the lack of resources and funds available to tackle the problem….but what is perhaps more surprising is the repeated reference to lack of understanding of SME’s, how to engage and communicate with them.

paul sutherland ’s insight:

Surely this is an open innovation question in the making - Given the extensive experience of economic development teams, the richness of the SME support ecosystem, and range of existing and diverse dedicated digital enterprise and related community initiaitives - we don’t need brilliant enigmatic solutions - we just need people to come together effectively to create local solutions.

There is an event in London on the 26th.  Unfortunately you can only attend if you are from a LEP which is a shame as I am sure there are plenty of potential contributors…I wonder who is attending from the North East and Tees Valley?  Certainly Interested to here the outcome.

When the heck did learning to code become cool?

See on Scoop.it - innovation in vocational education

And why it sucks to be a beginner today…

paul sutherland ’s insight:

Interesting insights from an experienced coder…

There’s a lot of hype out there about the next latest and greatest programming fad.

A lot of progress is being made in the programming world, but in general there’s not a silver-bullet single technology someone can learn that will immediately cure all problems.

Beginners are often encouraged to start digging into solutions for problems they don’t understand yet.

 

See on medium.com

Digital Talent and the Skills Match Discussion

See on Scoop.it - innovation in vocational education

Digital Leaders North West Salon:

Topic:  Digital talent – the match-up between our creative digital people and the skills our businesses need. 

Developing partnerships – education and business working together

First speaker Dr. Darren Dancey, of Manchester Metropolitan…Read More

See on digitalleaders.co.uk