 I'm going to kick off because we, like Lucy said, we have got a jam packed session this morning that's going to be really insightful for what stage of business is that. So I've already said my name's Stephanie, I'm the Invention Engagement Lead at Always Possible. So this is the fourth series in Recover and Rise, the SME Digital Accelerator. So yeah, this is the fifth session, we've got two more after this and that's actually the end of the whole series. So which has been running since September. So anyone that's new to the series, these events have run by West Sussex County Council and been taking place in September, organised to help smaller and medium businesses utilise digital tools and gain expert knowledge and advice in how best to grow the online presence and attract and retain new customers. So previous series prior to this have been headed up by Freedomworks and Creative Bloom and been looking at customers and marketing systems and productivity and getting online. So as I said, we're into the final series, run by Always Possible, looking at growth expansion and new products. So aim of the series is to help businesses to create the right conditions for growth in the digital world, something we can't get away from these days. So I'll just take this moment, just introduce you to the digital champions who there's a few of them joining the sessions today, I think we've got Andrew, Karen, Lisa and Nasa as well. So I'll pop them up on the screen in a moment, but basically anyone attending today will follow this session have access to eight hours of free specialist support from one of our seven digital experts. So range in specialisms in consultancy, marketing technology and all aspects of digital adoption. Lisa, who I've just popped up on the screen there, she'll be talking us through how you access your support later. But just for your benefit, I'm just poking them up on the screen. We've got Andrew, Kerry Bedel, Lisa Kerr, Malcolm Duffett, Rachel Dines, Bob Lawrence, Roya Crudas and student Winchester. And again, I'll share those slides again at the end so you can see what the specialist groups are and how you can access their support. Everybody's got different requirements. So the digital champions will be to work with you based on what your requirement is, so experts in their field. So I've talked a little bit about the series, but we're on to the fifth session in series four, so only a couple more to go till the end. Today is talking about digital tools for innovation, so quite a wide-ranging subject for Lisa to delve in today and she's got a couple of people joining her today to give a bit of an insight. So there's still time to look on to the final sessions of tech-driven growth. We will be joined by a panel of businesses in West Sussex talking about how digital does disrupt things, but how they've navigated that. So we've got various different businesses, Piglet's Pantry, we've got Sheffield Park, we're joined by a company that supports businesses in off-licent premises. So bars and pubs who obviously hit quite tragically by the pandemic and how they navigated that. So hopefully you can join us for that one on Thursday. And then the final session next week on Tuesday, a week today, is with all of our facilitators from the session. So Lucy will be with us and as well as the digital champions. So it's more of an ask the expert session. So any questions, burning things that you want to ask them, a bit more of an in-depth chat with them and ask questions. So without further ado, I'm going to hand it over to Lucy. Lucy is, well, she works with us a lot at, sorry, I went too far. Lucy works with us a lot as a facilitator. She's an absolute pro at this, but I'll let her explain a little bit about her. I don't over-sail me now, Steph, it's not going to work. And I've got my cheesy side of talking about stuff. See, Tan's already laughing about you giving me up, and she's even on the screen. Yeah, it's all good, isn't it? Well, we love working with her, she's got some amazing anecdotes. This is not good. My interviewer already taking the mic out of me. It's not a good start. Thank you, Steph. It's going to be a good session. So let me share my screen. But yeah, I'll hand it over to you, Lucy. Thank you. I do a little bit of a position about what we're going to talk about in the next hour and a half. And I want to first of all very much thank my panel because I got the timing wrong for this. So Tan and Mark, thank you very much for having a mad panic when it was midday rather than 12.30. It's always a good start. It's been that sort of week already. So the session takeaways, as we were saying, whenever I was getting comfy and getting their cup of tea, these are the key topics that we had within the session, understanding technology for innovation, funding tax benefits, gaining deep data insights on new products, new markets, new collaboration. This is a massive four points, isn't it? So I thought of where I'm approaching this, which is what we're going to do today. It's a talk round it because they're all into link. I don't think these things stand at sort of siloed discussions. So hence me asking Mark and Tan Llyngwll, who are being introduced to themselves in a moment. And basically the format is what we're doing right now, the intro. Then an interview, get you warmed up, get you thinking about innovation and tools and data. And then we'll get into the workshop. It's very much an interactive session, as Steph was saying. We'd love to hear from you. We'd love you to ask questions in chat, contribute your experiences. This is the power of getting together. And what I really like about online events is you don't have to wait until the end to put your hand up. You can do it in the moment. You can you can sort of explain how you've gone through something or how you've approached it, how you've got funding, what tools you've used. We'd like to share these experiences. So don't feel that you can't talk to us, because I've really, really enjoy having the chat on online events. And this is the slide I always hate doing, but it's quite good for you to understand where I come from and what I do. My background is art in English, words and pictures that ended up translating weirdly into sales. Because I also like people and I'm very curious. I did a lot of work in education, actually selling training. And I really liked having a sales engagement that had an impact on people and had an emotional engagement. I'm a solution sales person. I've done some random roles. I work for a pre-IPO startup in Silicon Valley, which is just Reading with Sunshine. And I created and ran an award winning training company which was sold back in 2005, which was a Cisco learning partner. So I can kind of black tech, but I'm definitely not a techie. I evolved into partner management, getting people to collaborate. I'm very passionate about partnering as being a great strategy for growth and innovation, which we are going to talk about later today. And through this kind of meandering path, I can't say there was a planned career here. I had a Sussex Innovation Centre, who hopefully you've all heard of, who based in Brighton, who were the third true business incubator in the UK 25 years ago, looking at the candy floss economy that we had in Brighton and Hope, two universities and no jobs. Sussex Innovation was created and I worked there for five years, helping businesses from pre-start, pre-idea to a multimillion pound plateaus to pivoting, and I managed a team of 12 graduates and placement year students there, acting as a resource catalyst team still exists, wonderful if you've never heard of it, you should definitely tap into it. But I grew up in Bath, so I'm back now here in the West Country. I moved back three years ago to work for a scale up to business community. And from there, I took the slightly scary decision back, I should be four years ago, so three years ago, I'm a freelance. And I kind of threw the net out to my amazing colleagues all over the country and ended up doing a wonderful mixture of projects from URI, which we're about to hear from in a minute, which is the University of West of England, who's always possible. I'm also at the Tech Spark, which is the Bristol and Bath tech community. I head up Tech Spark, Swindon and Wiltshire. I also do random things like social media for a ladder company, but I like having lots going on. I like working with founders and with organisations. I'm curious, it's like a plight worth being nosy, but I love being a part of that journey. And I'm really privileged to be a part of conversations like this to hopefully empower people and make connections that are great to hear more from the growth champions as well from the growth hub. So that's all about me. We've talked about personas in other workshops I've run. That is me as a persona. That is Caroline. Caroline is me with my house rabbit Arya. She used to write blogs for a property startup. We've talked about personas in some of the other workshops we've run and it's actually a really good thing to do with innovation as we look at business model canvas. It's really thinking about who you're talking to and making it very niche. So that's how I was created. I'd rather have her up than a picture to be honest with you. But that's the background. That's me, but innovation and data and funding is a massive topic. And I thought rather than it's not really one for slides, one for conversations. So Mark and Tan, thank you so much for joining me today. I shall stop sharing, get you up on the screen. Can I pick up your first to introduce yourselves and tell everybody what you do? Tan, do you want to go first? Hello, I'm Tranquan Nicholls. I'm the Digital Innovation Lead at the University at West of England. I manage a fund where we give out funding for small businesses delivering R&D. So that's what I've been doing for the past year. I also run other things like hackathons and I'm part of the Women's Tech Hub network in Bristol, as well. Thank you. Go on, should you Mark? Hi, I'm Mark Waldroy. I'm the entrepreneur in residence at the University of West of England. And I spend my days working with startups. We probably worked with over 100 startups to the last four or five years. We help them develop in whichever way they need to develop from raising funds. We've raised probably over 32 million, I think it's in the latest count of early stage funding for those startups. But it could also be grants, it could also be just organic growth. So we work with a lot of tech companies, but it goes beyond just tech companies. And we've got quite a variety on these calls as well. We've got small organisations through to SMEs. And I think that's innovation is perceived as being a startup game. But actually what we're going to be talking about, I think on this is I think I'd like to start with how companies should approach innovation, Mark. I'm going to give that one to you, because innovation, I think for a lot of established companies, it feels like a lot of hard work. It feels like a distraction. Yeah, I suppose I see innovation as an output for organisations. You know, there are companies who, you know, starts off from a they've invented something or they've they've developed something through a university or through their own sort of analysis of a market. And it's only when you start to sort of take that R&D and you couple it with commercialisation that you get to that innovation point. And to me, innovation is when you when you take an idea commercially to market and that's when you start to innovate within that market and do something different. So without commercialisation, innovation is just R&D in my books and without R&D innovation is just selling something. But I don't know what you'd be selling to be honest. So it's I think the challenge for early stage companies and for companies looking to develop their portfolio is getting that balance between how you commercialise and how you do do that sort of R&D type activity or that software development activity to enable you to innovate in a particular market. That tan's nodding. I mean, we see a lot of people who are attempting to innovate and really struggling, don't we, in our conversations? I also look after an innovation for growth funders when they do what you tan. What are the key challenges? You work with us early stage, aren't they? But they're all established businesses. Yeah, they're so I was going to say for established businesses, sometimes, particularly when you're looking at grant funding, you can't people don't always know they're innovating. And sometimes it's about how they they present that information. So so quite often, you know, you're just solving every day problems in your business, you've all done it this year. You've all been, you know, making quick pivots on all kinds of things. And some of it is just straightforward, you know, a day to day business activity. And sometimes you're doing really innovative stuff. And it's really some for the businesses we see on a day to day basis. It's it is useful sometimes to have somebody else look in and identify areas where you are innovating, because you might not know you're doing it. So it's quite useful to have to talk to someone from the outside and have a look at where that might qualify for the R&D tax credits or grant funding. So we find that all of the time. And we struggled that with branding in Swindon and Wiltshire because we put innovation for growth out there. And people, as you said, we're not innovating. We're surviving. We're evolving. We're having to do different things. We're having to readdress the processes. So we we had to change our marketing and call it change and evolution. Yeah, innovation is sometimes feels that feels uncomfortable as a term. Yeah, I tried. Yeah. Sorry, Mark. No, I'm just going to say, I mean, that's why I quite like this idea of it's commercialising an idea, because sometimes the innovation can be a new way of commercialising something. It can be taking it into a new market. It can be selling it in a way that you haven't sold it previously. And the net result is you're innovating in a space. And and I think too many people associate innovation with what they think happens in an R&D lab at a university or something like that. Yeah, they think it's Dyson. They think it's an inventor. Was that it actually, as I say, a good organisation should always be innovating to keep evolving. Yeah. But I think I like it's like you've read my size mark at the pieces. As you say, it doesn't exist in isolation because you've got to look at the resources and the markets. I mean, one of the questions about what makes good innovations to town when you're reading. We've seen a lot of grant applications recently, haven't we? Yes, a lot. A mark, sorry, a mark also does a lot of the sort of the proof reading. So what we do, we've both got funds that are live right now. And we do a lot of we do a lot of consults. We say we are that external perspective trying to rationalise what they're doing and why they're doing town. What do they get wrong? We'll start with the negative side. OK, so what people don't do is they they can't separate the actual innovation activity from their day to day. And that gets that that that is always a sort of downside for when people look at any kind of grant application, what they want to see is where the innovation project sits. And that's usually a new product or service. It's taking what you do to a new market and trying to. And I know when you're in your own business, it's really difficult to separate that out, but actually you have to be able to separate out your innovation work, your R&D work from your day to day. And normally most grant funders only pay for the when you're going for innovation grant, only pay for the innovation part of that grant funding. So that's really, really important that you know the difference between the two. And quite often that that is about the narrative. It's about telling the story. So quite often people don't mix up. The other thing they don't do is they don't they're not ambitious enough. All innovation needs to be ambitious. You must never approach these things with all maybe it's just a little bit useful. You know, it's got to be we're going to change something. We're going to, you know, bring something new or different into the market or, you know, into our practices or into the way we deliver our services. So people have got to be ambitious and the other things do is your research. So you really need to understand how what your roots to market is. Quite often people turn up and they don't talk about their roots to market so that we don't know as a funder where what you're going to be spending, what the purpose of your innovation is going to be, like who's going to benefit, who's going to buy it? How is it going to be deployed? So it's really important that you do your research as well. And that's good business practice, even if you're not looking for funding, or if you're going for grants or those. Mark, how do you help a company unpack all of this? They come to you and go, I've got this great idea. It's going to take over the world. Where do you start? Because you are that sounding board. You are that fresh perspective. They're too close to it. You might have to tell them their baby is ugly, which is always a good thing with the founder, isn't it? Or you've got a you've got a you've got a poke around. Wait, how do you start that conversation? I think what we try and do is we try and get them to be honest with themselves and actually say, you know, what is the problem that you're trying to address? Where is the proof that problem exists and how do you solve that problem? And it's almost the first three slides you'll see on any good pitch deck. It's, you know, the someone looking to make an investment or looking to work or partner almost needs to get get you within those first three slides. And then the rest of it just falls naturally beyond that. So it's trying to get people to understand the market they're addressing. It's amazing the number of companies we work with where they don't understand maybe the buying behavior or who does the buying or who does the influencing. And if you're trying to innovate or create a service, you've obviously got to maybe if it's you've got to solve a problem, which might be a business need, but you might have to address different problems that influencers and buyers have. And it's just trying to put all that together. So you end up saying that, yes, you have something that's innovative and there is a market that there's no point having something that's innovative if there's no sort of product market fit. And if if you can't find someone who's prepared to to pay for us, I was reading at the weekend this a VC from America, his philosophy is if you've got an innovation, your key challenge is to get your first 10 paying customers, because if you can get 10 paying customers, you can then get 100 paying customers and then you get 1000 paying customers. It's actually the it's those first 10 paying customers. You know, there are quarter of a million companies in the UK that employ more than 10 people. You know, if you can find those first 10, there's a big enough pool to go on and scale. And but the innovation market fit is really determined right at the start of the journey. And if you've got an existing client base and it's an evolution of your business, you've got to see those guys as you're hanging through, haven't you? Yeah. Yeah. And I came across another company at the weekend where, you know, you mentioned the need to innovate all the time. This is a company that has got that their annual turnover in recurring revenue is four billion dollars. And they're still growing at 23 percent. And they've gone from having one product two or three years ago to their core product now only accounting for 60 percent of that four billion turnover. Now, you know, if companies at that end of the bit market are, you know, looking for new ways of servicing their customers and improving how their customers work, it's, you know, there's never a time where you can sit back and say, I don't need to do this anymore. But a lot of founders will say they haven't got time. A lot of people are in this call with running over business again. That all sounds lovely, but when do I make time to do it? I think it's up to me. It is the key part of being a founder, to be honest. It is, you know, the founder is that key salesperson who's got to find those first ten clients and the founder wears many hats in the startup. And it's one of the biggest challenges they have. But a team helps. But, you know, ultimately, you're all trying to take an idea to market. And that's that's the hardest part of the journey. It's that first £50,000 grant or that first £100,000 angel investment or those first ten customers, it never always doesn't always seem it, but it does actually get easier after you get after you get over those initial hurdles. I also think that it's quite important to look at the resources around you. So it doesn't feel at all, sits on you. I mean, I'm speaking to a university here, but obviously I'm going to reference all universities in West Sussex as well. You know, you've got resources around you. It's not on you. You've got the growth champions. You've got your growth. You've got you've got to look at your infrastructure, which sometimes again, if you're running a business, you don't look up above and realise what's around you. Tanya, you mentioned about doing your research and really understanding that the digital tools and the funding. Where do you start? Because, again, there's a lot of information out there. Yes, where do you start? Actually, just just going back on the previous point, I was going to say I think it's interesting you asked that question about time because it really does take time. And one of the things that I do say to people is that if people aren't going to put the time in, then they shouldn't be applying for grants or doing that sort of thing, because it does. And there is you can buy in expertise in terms of some of it. And and you're right, there's loads of people out there who can help you. So going on to your point about where information comes from. There are a million places to look. I mean, we at UE we use Bohurst, which is a system here where you can look at, you know, the sort of the markets and what people are doing out there. There are you can access your local growth hub. They should be sign point, sign posting you to support. I'm not quite sure where the mechanisms are in the region. But it's on the call, coast of capital on the call. So we have some of the growth champions here, which is great. The other thing I was going to say is actually some of the intermediary organisations like lawyers, accountants, sort of R&D tax credit providers also provide some information in the background as well. So there are professionals who want your business and therefore will will give you some free advice. So you'll you'll see quite a lot of online courses and things like that provided by these organisations. These are as part of their business development, but there's quite a lot of free information out there that you can access. Yeah, this absolutely loads of places. And of course, ask your customer. So if you are innovating around a project and you are looking to put something new on the market and you have a preexisting list of customers, you should be testing out your idea on your existing customers and seeing where the market is, because they're perfect for doing that sort of thing, really, they will give you they will give you their opinion and it's the right place to start asking. Yeah, absolutely. And someone's mentioned in Chackroy, right, it is expensive tool, but universities have access to it. So we've just mentioned Sussex Innovation Centre. We're also going to talk about the BIPC when I do mine for the workshop in the BIPC, which is the British Library. That's all free and you can get on to Mintel and a whole fame and a whole range of of databases with them because there are routes to access as information for free, but it's going out with the right questions. So you've got to do some work before you go out otherwise you just end up drowning in data as well, don't you? But you've got you've got to get that you can get so much market intelligence and it is all about making sure that you've kind of filtered the ask, I think is a key thing. So you don't end up not doing anything because you're overwhelmed. We've had a gum up. I was just going to say, I think, you know, working with early stage entrepreneurs, you know, the good ones develop very sharp elbows and they're very, very good at getting to the front of the queue and they're very, very good at finding. I mean, I see Rebecca was talking about the the cost of both. I mean, I spend a lot of time, you know, with providing lists of the seas and, you know, showing other companies. And it's it's where universities, I think, add value to the startups. We have a whole host of sort of innovation support services from robotic labs and health tech labs and, you know, the startups use those sorts of facilities extensively because, you know, it helps them sort of punch above their weight. They can use equipment they can't afford. They can use services they they wouldn't have in house. So it's it's sort of about digging around your local ecosystem. Yeah, absolutely. There's always networks as well. You can always throw a question at your networks and see what they have to say. I think sometimes when we meet people with really good ideas, some people get really frightened of saying their idea out loud one either giving the idea away and, you know, someone nicking their idea on the other is that people don't want to put their baby out there so people to criticise. So it's kind of it's it's a I mean, I think I think on both of those, actually, if you've got an idea that is stealable, you do have to be careful. But actually, most people already people, somebody who's already trying to solve those problems if they're already out there. So I think it is worth testing your idea out in the out in your networks and making sure that you've thought through everything. And, you know, yeah, they're the ones that will be able to to find the gaps or the holes in what you're thinking about and things like that. So don't be afraid to ask and try and try and pivot. And I think we're talking about sorts. But I mean, all of those resources are available to SMEs. If you know that it doesn't matter what scale, you just got to go. And I think sometimes we university, especially, it's difficult to find the front door. We we are in effect, the front door at UWE Sinc is the front door to Sussex. You've got Chichester, you've got Brighton. They've all got business teams. They've all got equivalents of a future space of some shape or form of Sussex innovation and they want to engage your businesses. They've got to remit to do that. But going back to how we fund all these things, all the pieces you've just given me, I mean, I'm going to be talking about business model canvas going forward. It's you need to kind of map it out in some some sort of form to get it out of your head. Tans nodding. Cylentan. Yeah, get a plan together. I mean, you know, we watch. We watch SMEs evolve with us and they, you know, they sometimes come and they they've got an idea and they start mapping it out. And once they've tested it and they've asked the questions, they change that idea and people go from one thing to another quite quickly, actually. And and that that process is is really normal. You know, it's OK not to stick doggedly to one idea of you. If you test the market and it isn't the way you think it's going to be, then it's then it's good to sort of adapt and change and grow. And sometimes people start off with one kind of business and they end up with a different one and that's all good. You know, so we, you know, sorry, I was going to mention a company, but I can't. Sorry. So, yeah, so we have got companies that come in and they start with one thing. And actually the very process of writing an application is a really good way of sorting your head out as well. So I've had ones that come in, write an application. They didn't get the funding because the idea wasn't developed enough. And they come back a year later and their entire business model has changed. And they've, you know, they've they've they've filled in all the gaps and that's now become something different. And that's been, you know, it's really amazing journey to watch them go on. Actually putting it out there, as you were just saying, they're holding on to it, they put it out to us. It's our role to be honest. Yeah, you know, our agenda is for their growth. We don't have any other sort of perspective other than that. But you do need you do need to give that reflection of mine because after what you said at the beginning is you need to be brave and go show somebody. And I think the frustrating thing I feel that when we all do for those those board sessions, it's when they don't listen. Yeah, I very much try and get people. I mean, just go back on the ideas being stolen. I think we've worked with about 100 companies and I can't think of a case where an idea has been stolen. We've had people who come in and been very paranoid about it. And it just doesn't happen. Most people are just too busy with with what they're doing. And you're right, the idea of listening. I mean, I say to people, you know, you don't have to take any advice. I'm not benefiting from you. You're not paying me, it's just an opinion. But if you can get companies to start thinking in slices of time and what they want to achieve in those slices of time. So if you're raising a small angel round or you're getting a bid from innovate, or, you know, how are you going to be different as a business when you've actually consumed that money? You know, why are you in a better state to actually either raise more money or be more successful in the market? And I think the danger, you know, the companies that don't succeed are the ones that sort of drift and they just sort of exist and hope things are going to happen rather than drive an agenda. So it's all about, you know, you're raising X thousand. That's going to last you 12 months. Why are you going to be in a different place in 12 months because of what you've just done? You've got to have that vision, I think. And that's really important. I also know people who've got funding and have just burned through it because they haven't really defined what they're going to use it for. I've seen hundreds of thousands being burnt and not actually create any momentum, which is slightly terrifying. There's a question from Karen around using innovate with new markets with digital tools. I mean, for me, the digital tools I was thinking about was some of the databases we were talking about. I don't know whether you use tools to create that structure. What are your thoughts on that one? Wouldn't start with the tools. I would start with what you're trying to achieve. And then I mean, there is a lot of tools out there. And, you know, quite often people think they so the sort of things we quite often get is people say, I'm going to create an all in system where I'm going to have video training. I'm going to have I'm going to have messaging. We're going to have a community and all this sort of stuff. And you're saying, well, actually, aren't those tools already out there? You know, are you are there people all? So there are a lot of digital tools. Don't try and invent it. Building your own video conferencing system is actually quite an expensive thing to do, but to try and link existing tools together is the way a lot of very clever people are doing it. And let's face it, you know, Airbnb, Uber all exist, link together existing tools. They didn't actually invent the technologies that happen. So, so, you know, quite a lot of very, very successful innovations happen when people are taking a unique idea and then linking in preexisting technologies to make it all work. So that's that's kind of so, so yes, I wouldn't start with the tools. I would start with what problem you're trying to solve. And then I try to identify what these tools are out there that might already exist, that you can either integrate or build into what you're doing. And then there might be a bit of linking or a bit of, you know, something to make it work better. So it's it's it's that side of that. That's how I would approach it. I wouldn't I wouldn't do it around. I wouldn't start with a tool. No, I would agree. I think the danger with a lot of technology startups is they get focused, you know, obsessed with the technology sometimes. And sometimes it's about what you have to demonstrate to show someone that you've got credibility, that you've solved a problem. And sometimes you can do that with just literally sticking bits in, you know, mocking things up, building very simple prototypes. It's enough to get a market to say that they they may not buy it at that stage, but you can find out whether they would buy it or something like that. And I think you're right. The tools come later. When you actually know the solution you're solving, then you can actually identify what's the best tool out there to help you solve it. Yeah, absolutely. And so we're putting all these pieces together. And we're. What when you what makes your heart sing? What makes good innovation when somebody comes to to see you? Is it having all these pieces together? Having the vision? Is everything pulled together? What what what makes my heart sink is when I see people who have the passion, but there is something in their mind that's blocking something, you know, that they they've obsessed about a particular segment or a particular space or a particular way to market. To me that the most successful entrepreneurs or the people are open to ideas as well, you know, you've you've got to be you've got to have that. So you've got to be driven. But it is when you see opportunity going to waste that that to me is the the most disheartening part of the job. You know that if you work with early stage companies, a high proportion of Mark going to make it. But there are ways of failing and, you know, there are ways of failing that you've given it your best shot and there's ways of failing because you've been stubborn and weren't prepared to change or something like that. And I think that's it's a wasted opportunity. It's the bit that really is the thing that gets my back, to be honest. Yes, some really good ideas don't don't happen. And I was going to say sometimes it's useful for people to share that journey as well. So quite often loan inventors can be quite you know, have a single invention that they'd like to take to market and it's normally very good and everything else. But sometimes it's useful to bring in another person to try and share that journey, to try and get a different perspective on things. What makes me happy though is is where where people come in and they are both ambitious and realistic. So they they have a big picture. They know what the direction of travel, they know where they're going, but actually they've identified a step and they know they're going to get funding for that step or they're going to deliver very specific targets. And and they're very clear to speak to this and we're going to do this. And then once I've done that, I'm going to do this next part. And that's really amazing because they plotted their journey and they thought through they've got the big ambition always in their sites. But actually they're taking single steps towards them. And that that's always brilliant when you see that because people are you know that people have got a plan to not always go to plan, but they've got a plan. Now, absolutely. I think I've seen so many. The problem is that you've touched on a good point. There's having more than one person leaving the project. So you do have a joint found or you have somebody working with you on it. I think scattergunning and lack of focus. And people that's kind of the shiny thing, isn't it? It's just not really focusing on it and not putting the right structure and tools in place. They're unfundable as well, because as a funder, you'd be terrified. Yeah, I go as far as to say to people, you know, I can't really think of a successful company we've worked with that's raised funds as a single founder business. And part of the process we we we talked to people about is finding that co-founder to do the journey with you because particularly when you're going out to angels and VCs at a later stage, they just don't want to find a single single founder businesses. So if we had an SME listening to this, who's thinking, I want to, I can't gosh, I have kind of been innovating over the last couple of years. I didn't call it that. I called it coping with COVID and getting through. What would you say they should do to to keep that as part of their strategy going forward? Because I think a lot of people might think, OK, that was a survival mechanism rather than a long term way of running the business. I think this idea of always having having either whether it's external or internal, having people that you can to the step sometimes outside the business and then talk. And I think one of the things last two years forced everyone to do was to step outside their normal day job in some form or other. And so that that process was forced on everyone. And I think this idea of continually reviewing what you're doing and not getting sort of in that probable ruts and being aware of what technologies or what techniques are being deployed in the market around you, you run a cheese shop. When do you go online? Do you go online? Do you start selling online? It's all those sort of things that come in from the side that can change how you do your work and just be open to ideas. And I think I think innovation is as much about mindset. You have whether it's whether you're a glass half full or a glass half empty person. I think good innovators are always looking to try and improve the status quo. One of the things we're seeing a lot at the moment is really interesting to my cheese shop's mark is that one of the things that we're seeing a lot of at the moment is that industries that are not traditionally technical or digital are picking up a lot of this digital transformation. Where this happening at the moment and they're doing some serious innovation around food, food production, architecture, you know, all the sort of industries where I'm starting to see really interesting stuff that's happening so it's not innovation is not just for you know, just the tech companies, but actually this innovation is now if you're running any kind of business this last few years should be making you think differently about how you approach your customers, how you manage your data, how you run your processes, how you recruit, how you train your staff and all of that, even where they're located and where you sit them is now moving into digital space and an innovation has got a big part to do. It's going to be a really big part of that. And so we're seeing we're seeing all of that happening at the moment and some of the best and most successful innovations are a longstanding cheese shops, you know, starting to sell online, move in the production online, moving it to sort of digital manufacturing processes and all sorts of things. So it's really interesting. So, yeah, that's kind of where that's what we see. It has been a forced evolution and it's not always been comfortable. You know, I've been working with a technical training, but online technical good, which is in the rest of Bath region. And as you say, where a whole pile of companies going, OK, the doors are locked. What do I do? How do I survive? What tools can I use? What's best practice? They came to us as a text bar because they're quite scared of going to a digital agency because they didn't know what they didn't know. They had to kind of work through the tools and the processes. And then I mean, one poor guy, actually, his website locked up. But, you know, for the SMEs who are in a non-digital space, it's been a bit of quite a terrifying moment. But if they've got through, they probably have a much more robust broader business. I mean, you mentioned T. I think about Pidlix Pantry who is a worthy way. You know, they used to provide pies into the football stadiums. I think that the Amic Stadium Brighton, the game was that Saturday when we went to lockdown on Wednesday. They've suddenly got a few thousand pies. They went online. They pivoted. Now they've got the most amazing. If you Google it, Tanya, you'll be hungry. They've got the most amazing online business now, but it was accidental. But now, actually, that's the future of their business. So I think it's that resilience, isn't it, of going, OK, I've been to Sideswipe, but I'll get up and I'll keep going. And that's really hard to do. I think that that's probably been the biggest single change over the last 10 or 15 years. You know, you don't have to be a technologist to benefit from technology innovation now, an awful lot of the tools are out there to help anyone innovate if they need to. Yeah, and it's funny to say, I think the key thing is, is go out and ask best practice, go to peer groups, go to network and see what other people in your space have done. Tap into the growth hub, tap into universities and use all these resources. Thank you both. I was a nice, but the key thing I've struggled with when we've been doing our funding is people just not being able to explain what they're doing and how they're doing it. And so therefore they can't be getting funding. They don't know where to go. If you can't articulate it, it's back to that pitching, you know, we do pitch me in pitch clubs and that's not necessary to do one for an actual funding bid, but you just be able to do that elevator. What do you do and how do you do it? So many businesses really struggle with that. Yeah, I think that's the I don't think there is a one size that fits all. And that's I think we try and do a lot of one to one with companies because there are so many different reasons why some people will have problems addressing the market, some people have problems addressing a technology innovation, but they are in the same market space, but they come into, you know, they have different problems. And so it's really that one to one is the I think the key to unblocking some of that. Yeah, make time. I think a lot of founders or business owners don't think they have time to go and spend this whole thing we say is working on the business rather than in the business. There's some wonderful resources in a couple of days. Townside, we've all been running workshops, haven't we? In real life, actually, we did the end last year. That was lovely, but getting people out and just sitting in with other people who run their own businesses is gold dust. How did you approach that? What did you do? Yeah, no, it's not just you. It's quite a lot. Yeah, people get a lot from sharing that experience with each other. And, you know, it's very there are numerous things that people can do. And it's just finding out what other people are doing and and how they solve problems that helps give you ideas and come up with new solutions. Because as I've asked, you know, we said we're not talking about, you know, the tools specifically, but if you Google CRM, you know, you come up with half a million of them, wouldn't you? And most organisations that we work with, they even know what that means, they don't know how they implement it. So, yeah, go out and work with some peers. But innovating maybe needs a bit of a rebrand as a name. Maybe it is evolution, it's growth and it's energy. Yeah, thank you both very much for your time. I'll let you get back to lunch and you're smoothie, Tan. Yeah, thank you. Cool. Thanks very much. Thank you. Cool. So the purpose of that, I mean, obviously, we said on the the the topics, what we're looking at today is we're trying to understand technology for innovation. But actually, it's not looking at CRMs and ERPs. It's looking at the tools for that as well. So that's what I was mentioning with the things like BoHurst and the other databases you can access as well. But thank you very much to Tan and to Mark there. And coming back to what innovation is, as they rightly said, it's not about reinventing, it's not about being, you know, at James Dyson. It is a new idea or a method. And we're looking at sort of innovation from a funding perspective and from a data perspective. And when we're thinking about funders and by funder, that could be a bank loan. It could be could be a grant, as we were talking about, we've got ERDF money that's coming in at the moment still, the final sort of chance of that. But also even just as a business perspective is really looking at mapping out your projects, and I think that's what Mark was saying is, you know, innovation feels like it's like calling everyone an entrepreneur. I know a lot of business owners feel really uncomfortable with that as a brand, as a tag. This is actually a question from an innovation for growth fund in Swindon and Wiltshire, and this is what we're looking at. It's not about reinventing the wheel. It's looking at just doing things differently. It's looking at we don't expect everybody to be the next Uber. I think that's probably one of the most overused sort of conversations that every startup seems to have as an SME. What we're talking about with innovation is looking at existing process techniques and all disruptive, so you could be bringing in new technologies, but you might just be addressing a new market or working on a different platform. So the key thing is innovation isn't business as usual, and it does normally involve some sorts of research development because you're going to have some unknowns, it could be a natural evolution for your business, but you still want to be rationalising it and reflecting and looking back. And. The application of existing process of techniques in new areas. So you might be one example I'm working with right now that they are implementing in the RP system, and that for them is a massive revolution to a family business who's done his transaction in a very traditional way. For the last 20 years, the sun has taken on the business. And for them, that's pretty different. Other people might be bringing in new process and techniques, but they might be a blend. It's quite rare that someone's inventing something totally different, but they could be that disruptive approach. It's actually probably where most funders get most concerned unless you have a track record in that space as well. But I think as businesses, I'm sure most of you, as town was saying, have innovated hugely because we were forced to really, weren't we? During during lockdown, I don't know if anybody, any of the businesses here want to know how they might have evolved. But I also feel that that sometimes forced innovation, getting out of the comfort zone can be a huge benefit. We talked about a lot of people on the high street retail hospitality, especially who, if they could, had to find different markets and then had to suddenly leverage the data they'd collected that never really had time to utilise. So I mean, we're not going to have polls up on this one. But if anybody who's listening from as a small business, as an SME, wants to share an example of innovation, you don't have to. You can DM me if you like. You don't have to share it with the audience. But I think maybe reflecting going, OK, that felt like survival, but actually it was innovation and looking at also how you funded that when that was a conversation you were having, maybe just at the time. R&D, again, I don't think these are again R&D. A lot of SMEs, you think R&D is more for people who are in the tech or in the science space, but in any new project, you sit there and start scoping out what your innovation could look like or what you'd like to do or an idea you've had. You've got to really understand what what that's going to mean and make sure that, as Mark was saying, the goal is that everything leaps into the bottom line. You know, it's not all about reinventing something just for the fun of it. That sounds incredibly glamorous. You've got a business to run, you've got to rationalise and do some research as to whether this is a good idea and whether that is actually going to be of benefit to your company's growth longer term. And again, this is from a funding perspective. This is the innovation questions, the R&D. We want to see the reason I took this out. This is from the Swindor Wiltshire Fund again. When you're looking at innovation, when you are getting out and reflecting on it, I like these questions here about where the unknowns and the uncertainties and the challenges and be really honest that if you are going through a revolution in your business, it's going to feel a bit uncomfortable at times, isn't it? It's going to have that moment when you're thinking this is a little bit scary. Innovation should always feel like a stretch, but it's a calculated stretch. So again, all these questions that you might see on any grant application or even your bank's going to see this if you're getting a loan crowdfunding, however you're approaching funding your innovation, you're going to be answering these questions and any kind of funder wants to see that you've gone through. So in this example, this is the fund I'm working on. We like people to tell us again, I know what I'm doing. This is my business. This is my area of expertise, but it's a little bit daunting. I'm backing myself, but yeah, it is still a bit of a leaf out of our comfort zone, but I'm really aware that we are going to be able to create jobs, we're going to create revenues, we're going to create growth, but I still have a concern. There's going to be a challenge, but there is true innovation in this. This is the sort of thing that you want to ask yourself. So Tam was saying, filling in an application form for a grant, which can be a bit of a beast at times, is really good to rationalise all the pieces of your innovation project and of your plan going forward. And you haven't got to be reinventing the world zero to one. It's a great book. One of the founders of PayPal, he feels that if you're not, you know, zero to one point, one point, one point, that's enough. He wants to go to one something completely different. Actually, for most of us, that's not going to be achievable. I'd rather do something like a Pella net who are an agency based in Brighton who just made some calls on how they do their business, who they work with, how their brands and their vision and they've evolved through innovating by doing businesses the way they want to do business. So what does innovation means to you as a business? Actually, it's a really personal thing. And I think it's also quite interesting to look at who you see as a founder or a business owner as being innovative and why? Looking out in your sector and others. And we mentioned in Piliq's pantry, it's a great example of a very traditional business as it was being forced to go online and totally innovating. And the founders daughter got very involved with the branding and they've got wonderful ambassadors, influencers and social media. They have, I think if you told the founder two years ago, the business they have now, she wouldn't have believed you for a start, but she probably would have thought how on earth do I get there? But who do you see as innovative? I don't know if I see that as being the Dyson's and Elon Musk's and those sorts of guys. Is it those companies who've been going for 40 years and just keep on learning, evolving, moving, growing? Do we have more respect for the spark or for the long term? Again, do feel free to put that in chat if you want to share your experiences. But I also think a lot of people feel they should only look in their sector and the peers. And a lot of people I speak to, I'm going to get a mentor, but it's going to be somebody who's done exactly what I've done. Actually, I'm a great believer in pillaging what's happened in other sectors and seeing what you can learn from them and applying it to your own. A lot of disruption comes from that. Just sort of taking it, taking something and moving it in. I think it's very rare that Tan use the word unique. I ban that from any any pitching or any bids that I work on because very, very rarely is anything unique. I'm looking at the starting to innovate. So when you're you're thinking, you know. OK, I'm going to I'm going to address this word innovation. I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to bring it on. But I want to have an innovation mindset in my business. And that's with your team. You need to change the mindset. I think you can get a lot of people who are going, well, OK, I'm moving. I'm breaking even is not broken. And to move out and innovate, you have to change your mindset. You're going to have to look at how you work and how to do it differently. Maybe make reach out to the growth up to the universities, to the chambers and actually engage with your community. So you've got to change your mindset. You've got to be curious. A successful business owner is always curious, whether you're reading. We talk about sort of great, great magazines to reach from an innovation perspective, but also get perspective. A lot of business owners are so busy with their head down that they don't look up and then they don't really see how competitors, peers, supporters, partners, potentially all doing. And you need to have that because it's all gives you all the pieces. You don't know everything as a business owner. And it is a lonely environment if you're trying to do it by yourself, even if you've got a team as the leader to get out and meet other leaders and share obviously time, time, people and money tends to be the three things that everyone gets the most stressed about. You know, but go out and look at how other people have dealt with that, what tools they've bought on board, how they've approached it, where they've got funding, put all the pieces together and really make this fun. You know, if we've got through, if we could survive the last two years, what are we going to do in 2022? Really have fun, put a rocket up this business that we're running and move it forward with all those lessons we've learned. If we can survive this, we can take on the road if we want to, but rationalise the ideas as well. So if you sit there and say, right, I'm going to go and meet up with somebody on and get the team together, we're going to do a bit of a brainstorming session about all things we could do and we're going to ask our customers about what they'd love us to do and then really rationalise them all down. So again, with all this, we don't want to stretch you too thinly as a founder because we know that everybody is time poor. And then getting planning, we're going to look at some tools in a minute to start with that planning and how we innovate and then implement and repeat and it becomes, but I break it down into small chunks so that you don't lose heart because innovating at the truest scale is quite hard. And so we're going to use a tool I'd recommend to everybody if you're looking at innovating or getting grant funding or looking at all the other pieces. As I said, the tools, the key reasons is on there as well. Hopefully, everybody up here has seen Business Model Canvas. I'm a big fan because it's very simple. It's great for innovation because you can have all of the pieces that you need to consider on one sheet, as you can see in front of you here. So when you're looking to fill in an application form or rationalise your go-to-market or the tools you need to deliver this innovation, you've got your customer segments, your value proposition, your roots to market, your resources, revenue streams, partners, all the things you need to think about. So if you sit there and say, our existing customer base is telling us that this is a really good idea, what does that look like logistically? What does it look like from a sales, marketing, resources, activities, cost and revenue stream perspective? I would get this up on a whiteboard and maybe get someone who doesn't work for you. So if you have a mentor, a consultant, somebody you trust, it's going to really braze to it with you and ask why and give you a bit of a poking at your early comfort zone. But if you can map this out, you've got a pretty robust application if you're looking at getting funding for it, but also a very clear picture on how you're going to get out there and sell it to whom or with what message. So this can really rationalise it. So if you're working around the Business Model Canvas and can't answer all these questions, you might need to do a little bit more work on your innovation. So it's a great tool. It's open source, totally free to use. So if it's something you haven't seen before, strategiser.com, which you can see on the bottom of the box there. You can have there are videos which talk you through each individual segment, how they all connect together and how you approach it. So it's a wonderful tool all online, lots of YouTube, lots of examples. Here's Airbnb as an example of a completed total business canvas. Obviously you can do this for each individual idea that you have if you'd like to. And I was quite surprised actually with Airbnb about how many segments they had and how many value propositions. It's quite a complicated looking one. But actually it makes sense as I've used this because we've all used Airbnb, I'm assuming it makes sense to me to sort of break down all the different pieces that you have for that. It's yeah, at least it's a great mind mapping tool. And I really I really enjoy Miro as well. So the whiteboarding, there's lots of really good tools. Yep, there go lots of really good tools to to get your ideas together because this is one of the key things if it's bubbling round the head, get it out there and use it and but do get someone to do it with you. I had somebody who was quite bored doing business more canvas by myself. It's no, it's a conversation and doing a canvas should take a full day if you're working it through with somebody. Yeah, I like Miro as well. But there are there are lots of tools out. And I think it's working out what you want them to do for you as well, isn't it? And the deep data insights, the BIPC, I know some comments and chat around the limitations on the Brighton one. I wasn't aware of that. I mean, I always possible we helped the launch of the IP center. I mean, if you have to tap into Bristol, I found one of the challenges with the amount of data they have is knowing the right question to ask them because they've got access to all those databases. That's just a small number of them. So you need quite a specific ask. But if you've narrowed your idea down using business model canvas, using your existing clients and your data you have, so you can go and find out how many people are doing X. I think the BIPC is a good place to start and to tap into their resources as well. So also we've all mentioned this like didn't we as well? The deep data insights. Bohus, good feedback. It is expensive, but you can tap into it through universities. I would say Sussex Innovation Centre should be able to help if they can't. You've also got to Chisterham and Brighton universities. We've got different business schools. That's a good way to tap in. Obviously, the growth hub. I mean, I'm amazed by how many businesses don't realise the growth hub exists obviously around the country and tapping into their resources, signing up for their newsletters, understanding there has been a wealth of support over the last two years. The teams have all grown in every growth hub. How that will evolve going forward. I know we have had some different funds coming through, but that's always good to sign up for the newsletters to see what funds are coming through, what events, workshops and access to resources. They're a great sign poster. So again, if you have a question, it's definitely a place to go. We've given a thumbs up to the universities there, the Chisterham, Brighton and Sussex. But we're quite lusky in Sussex. We can also tap into London. I'm working in Swindon and Wiltshire on my UEE project. We don't have any universities. So we are busy. Oxford, Brooks, Reading, Bournemouth, Set Squared. It is one of the great things of lockdown is that universities, they've become easier to engage with. We also have the Sussex Chamber of Commerce. Again, a great route to resources and connections. I actually forgot to put the FSB up on here. I do apologise to the Federation of Small Businesses, but these are all really good people who have that signposting role, that hub role, to be able to link you out from there. And I think I put LinkedIn in there because I think a lot of SMEs don't use LinkedIn as the tool. It can be not only from a connections perspective, but getting your brand awareness out there. But also we're going to talk about partnering and about connections and to be honest, getting sales. It's a great sort of wealth for that. But you can also then look at your competitors, look at your peers and understand what's going on in your market space and what the conversations are. And I put Facebook there. That's not, it depends on what business you are. I think I find Facebook more from a retail perspective than LinkedIn would be. But you've got lots of great data insights around you that you need to tap into. And we talked about competitors, aspirational competitors. And when you're looking at your innovation and your strategy, I think as Mark was leading to, a lot of people tend to do it as a silo and don't have that perspective. So it's quite good, especially when you're looking at innovating to see what everybody else in the market is doing and see what you could do and how you could do it differently and what you might borrow from your competitors. It's always quite interesting to basically do that as well. I think I always found when I ran a Cisco learning partner, I would take the time, probably every quarter at least to look at the competitors and see what they were doing and how they were doing it. And there would be as much to make sure I could differentiate and use different language as it would be to look at how I could complement and maybe do similar things. And your innovation will have competitors. So if you're thinking about doing something differently, pivoting your business, evolving, it's always good to look out to see who else in the space is doing something that fails familiar because it's not always obvious. Some of them customers might perceive as competitors. So I would, when you're mapping out your innovation and looking at your competitors, don't stalk them, but sign up to the newsletters, follow them on social, go and see how easy they are to engage, map out the USPs. Again, this perspective of where your business and where your innovation will sit in perspective with everybody else. So when you're doing your marketing, when you're building that business model canvas, you are very clear where you sit in comparison. And fresh perspectives back to that sort of in different ways of gaining it. I love Korea magazine, one of my go-to's every month that comes through the door. And this house started business came out a year ago. And although its title suggests that it is just for startups, it really isn't. It's got some great models and some great tools in there to help you with that mapping and refreshing. You would do as an existing business, you should be doing it to review sort of your landscape and your perspective. But if you are breaking out an innovation, the tools will also be very good for that. Breaking out is being new, a fresh product or service or perspective. So that is a wonderful magazine and also available online as well. All the tools are here as well. And I put some of these in as a bit of fun. House being more pirate is about culture and thinking differently. That's the application of it. Purple Cow is a wonderful for marketing perspective. Very small business book, my favourite tune in the do waffle. Lean startup. Again, a great way of running an innovation applicable for any type of business just to break it down, to a minimum of our products, to keep it moving forward. And the mom test test is also great fun. That's all about asking the right people what they think of your new product, your new service. The mom test relates to going and asking the wrong people the wrong question. So the premise being if you went and ask your mum if she likes what you've done, she'll probably say yes, because she's your mum and doesn't want to offend you. So as you're looking at your innovation, as Mark was saying, and town actually get it out there, show people, don't be afraid of people stealing it. We used to have very rarely at such innovation, people would ask for NDAs and they were generally the ones that never went anywhere because they were so busy protecting it, they didn't give it air, it died. You've just got to put it out there. There will always be competitors. You've just got to back yourself and be robust. And actually competitors are good if you are the first to market and truly legitimately innovative and nobody else is doing it. You are quite likely to fail being first to market is brutal because the consumers don't know that they actually need you. So yeah, don't be afraid to just go out there and show your babies the world and take the feedback. Partnering for me is a real missed opportunity. I think a lot of people think they have to do it themselves or they have to build the team. We talked a little bit around that partnering for support but I'd also say if you're looking at innovating or you're looking at bringing a new product or service to the market, not only from a revenue perspective but also from a go-to-market perspective a partner is an ideal tool to market. That was how I built my award winning Cisco learning partner. I was just three of us in a, literally a shed in some group to far, it was very glamorous but I found running Cisco training company. I found two Microsoft houses who couldn't run Cisco training because of the cost who needed to work with me to give them a differentiators and their competitors. So if you're looking at innovation or a new product or service do look at who that would also be a value to. I was speaking to an app developing organisation earlier this week who is looking at working with a marketing company because those marketing guys will never develop apps but they're always talking to people about the branding and the marketing for the app. So collaboratively they've got a great business perspective going forward. So if you're looking at developing something different look at who you can work with. You might already have existing partners. You probably have people in your network or in your even in your organisation who you might be able to work with to do that. So see partnering is when you're innovating it's not standalone and also if you're looking for funding going together as a consortium is always more powerful. So do you think about partnering as you're going forward? Back to Curio Magazine one of my favourites and I think this is why businesses fail. That's what it's called as a graphic but I think it also applies as to why innovations fail and that market need is probably the one that's most important in this conversation is that when you're innovating you've got to make sure people need it. You've got to go out there. You've got to just be open to hear that they may not. This graphic is really, really handy for me. It's kind of when you're filling in your business model canvas we look at your innovation and you're looking at your funding and your pitching for that investment. Address all of these. You've got to make sure that you've got you understand your competition you understand your pricing you understand your revenue streams. As Mark said, if you're going to get investment 200,000 miles whatever it may be what that's going on and what that will deliver is painstaking to see these organisations who do get good funding and then just blow it as though they get like punched drunk because they've got a couple of hundred thousand. There was one I knew who hired half a dozen people in three months later had to get rid of them and it was horrific to watch and it was the naivety of the founder and them not having someone to hold him accountable basically. So when you're doing your innovation do you keep that one in mind as well? And some of these we've actually talked a little bit about with Tan and Mark and I think it's all really easy to address but it fails to get funded and it fails to get started without that market perspective and competitive landscape without the defined market needs without the defined development costs. Another thing we see quite a lot when people come to us on sort of a funding is that everybody could want it. I've got this product that everybody needs. That doesn't work from a funding perspective it doesn't work from a marketing perspective it doesn't work from any business generation perspective because you need to build that persona and remember my little cartoon at the beginning you do need to narrow it down into that segment because then it's investable then it's scalable then it's tangible and then the data becomes relevant as well. We also see a lot of people who give lip service to innovation who see it as a bit of a side hustle and don't give it enough time you have to find that time as a business owner which can be quite challenging or people like America Express used to have an office in Sussex Innovation Centre to literally take that team out because they knew if they were in the office they'd be dragged into other conversations so giving it breathing space maybe every other Friday and going on innovation workouts or going to networking or just taking some time out to let it breathe. A lot of innovation as well fails because people they don't see the problem that maybe that they're being stubborn or that they're creating something that nobody needs and that comes where we see build it and they will come a heck of a lot especially on the tech side a lot of things don't get to minimum viable product they just get thrown out into the world and then slowly get ignored and fly away but it's kind of seeing this as a side project and seeing it as something you need to write and building its own model canvas I think it's what makes it really successful again getting all those pieces in as we discussed. But if you start with a Y I'm a big fan of Simon's Cynex so it's quite good to get someone out there and go I've got this great idea and have somebody go Y, Y, Y we do a lot of that when we're reading through the applications of just people can't explain their narrative they don't understand why they're doing it and how they're doing it they're not getting the data they're not using the right tools to put the pieces together but it's good to have loads of ideas and then really rathn them down into the ones that are going to work and keeping it really lean and giving it very keeping curious and keeping learning because it's also what funders want to see as well because as we look at the different funding solutions they want to see that this is an organisation that thinks differently and you could be looking at existing clients you could be building something from them and that they might be those early adopters they might get in a deal when they first join you and sign up for your new products or services you might get a minimum viable product that's an MVP again a lot of the reasons why innovation goes wrong is that people build it too far and don't get it out there into test mode you need to get something a bit quick and dirty up there and get it out a good example for me around the MVP is Novalm versus Microsoft you've probably heard of Microsoft you may not have heard of Novalm a beautiful, fully-formed software company that spent too long getting it right and not just getting it out there that got beaten by an organisation as a very different approach to development I think we'll put it that way we've seen the races we've seen that sometimes the hair does win unfortunately but get some beta testing out there get it bootstrapping if you can sideline it and have the revenue streams to do it if you're doing it at that sort of very raw level how can you get it out there get that momentum going but get people signing up or coming along or whatever the product could be on the other side, yes, you have the venture capitalist you have the angel investors, the grants and loans and angel investors and venture capitalists aren't all for tech businesses you have many different flavours you have investor networks of people who will happily give £5,000 or £10,000 to have a business that they just really believe in and they're not asking for big equity so it's looking at your investor network if that's how you see your innovation going forward tap into your investor network and see what fields they come from I've known some who've been at the end of their careers who are quite happy to just put money into a business without wanting a return so there are different conversations to be had there are grants and loans out there as well I think what often with grants you need to keep your ear out full then they tend to come in flurries though obviously it was quite a few during lockdown ERDF is the final sort of chance of that there's the community renewal fund coming in you just have to be signed up to those you might want to have a separate mailbox for them just to make sure you don't miss out on the ones that come through that you are eligible for but really be quite tight on scrutinising the eligibility which I know sounds silly but when a man or a time people will fell a form in and not realise that it's not correct for their product solution service or even a geographical region we've had people trying to apply it into a new culture who aren't based in a region and that just doesn't get through so be really do your homework but do also see filling in an application form as being a good test of your idea and your innovation there are also R&D tax credits I'm not going to go into too much details on those as well but the government website can talk to you about how that works and what that's for getting paid to do your tax credits but the way this works I quite like this formula you still want to make that investment yes you can get some money back and you'll use that to reinvest the innovation so that's a really great tool and it's worth talking to your accountant about all having into the growth hub as well to ask for advice as to whether your projects will be eligible and how to start I know many organisations you fill in their own R&D tax credits I know some who really really don't want to do that and outsource that and have done very well out of it but it's another process to pull into your business but don't assume that you're not eligible for any of these things just because you maybe think you're working more traditional business it's worth investigating it we are coming to an end it has been our innovation the digital tools for innovation a lot of it for me is really around the data and around business model canvas there's no digital tool that we can download that will suddenly make you an individual organisation but there are different tools that you can bring up into your organisation that will help you think more innovatively a lot of it involves you going out there and actually being curious to be very honest but creating that environment to innovate reaching out to local support resources and using that data I think that's a really powerful tool business model canvas user existing contacts and clients and partner get out there and just be a part of a collaboration and a broader story I think that's really key and if you bring all these pieces in again you will create something that only has a huge impact on your business but is also very investable if that's what you're looking to do in terms of earning money Steph over to you thank you I mentioned before just around we've got digital champions supporting us and joining the sessions so Lisa if you'd like to unmute yourself we'd love to hear directly from you just around how our SMEs can contact you and how they can get the support hi yep that's fine sorry it was taking a minute now while you've connected me as a host it to cut you out and then put you back in oh sorry no problem I'm here now thank you yep if so in terms of the digital champions would you mind going back to the earlier slides just so we can recap on on who we all are oh they're down here there you go yep there you go yep great so Coast to Capital who is a co-supporter of this programme has seven digital champions and we are here to provide a day of free support for any businesses who have attended one of these webinars so all of our West Sussex businesses the day is fully funded by Coast to Capital so can't stress that enough that it's a day of free support from one of the seven digital champions you can talk to us about any of these different areas so you've got Andrew Kerry Bedel who was on the call earlier who deals with websites and CRMs I deal with productivity and processes in terms of tech tools Malcolm Duffett who has been on some of the earlier sessions he is an e-commerce expert Rachel Dines who you may have seen presenting some of the sessions in series two is SEO expert and marketing next slide thanks to us Rob Lawrence who's also been on lots of these sessions he deals with the complete digital transformation process Rob's actually written a book called Get Fit for Digital so quite impressed there with his abilities Roya is digital acceleration and Susan is looking at digital focus on your products and services and to contact us Oh that's the one up isn't it Yeah No thank you so you'll get this link with the slides after the session you can click on the contact form I think I've just seen that pop up that Annemarie shared that as well thank you Annemarie you click on the contact form and you just put some basic details in there where it says area of expertise required you don't have to put too much in that box so if you just need a day of support to help you figure out what on earth you need to do that is absolutely fine you can put that in that area so just say the area of expertise required is a day of digital champion support to help you then it says great relationship associate will follow up with you that will be probably Karen or Nasa who are both on this call earlier as well and they will chat with you they will point you in the direction of the right digital champion or you can contact any of the digital champions directly if we are not the right one to help you we will let you know that so we work as a team we all know what each other can deliver and we all just want you to get the best value from this support so reach out to any one of us and we will help you figure out who is going to give you the best value the best advice in that day and it says there undertake a quick digital review again that is nothing scary it's a 20 question very brief digital questionnaire called DNA 6 which just gives you a breakdown of the different areas of digital and you're just able to assess yourself how you're doing in those different areas and that could just help to lead that conversation so free support please take us up on it we're all here to help you thanks Steph thanks Annemarie definitely thank you Lisa you said it much better than I could and you know like Lisa said they're all experts in the different fields so there will be someone that will be able to support what you need from them so please do click on that link that Annemarie's just shared and add in your details and they'll be in touch with you shortly so thank you for that Lisa they'll all be joining the last two sessions that we're running in series four as well particularly the Q&A session when NASA is going to be presenting around the support again and answering any questions and some of the other digital champions will be joining that session so please do join so just to give you a bit of an overview thank you to Lucy for that and to the panellys Mark and Tan for sharing their thoughts as well so thank you for that yeah Thursday's session bit of a different format but we're joined by four different businesses from West Sussex so I mentioned Piglet's Pantry which Lucy also talked about Sheffield Park and National Trust venue who else we've got we have got a company called Six or Six which look after businesses in off-premise so bars and pubs so how they navigated all the changes the government made during pandemic around opening and covid passports that sort of thing and then also we're joined by Jeremy Taylor who looks after business support in Gatwick Diamond so all those businesses up there in the Gatwick sector so yeah and it will be run by our CEO Richard Freeman who's going to be pointing some questions to them around how they navigated and what digital tools they had to take on board during the pandemic to support the disruption that everything was everyone felt around the pandemic so really get to grips as to what tools and what technology they had to integrate or bring on board to help them in their business during that time so they'll be there to share that so I do hope you'll join us for that and again next Tuesday the final session in series four which is a round it's more of a Q&A Ask the Expert kind of panel session where you can really get to grips and ask some questions that have been on the radar that you've been burning to ask both our facilitators and our digital champions as well so I hope you can join us for that we'll include the link there on how to put those sessions but I hope to see you there and thank you again to Lucy for joining us