FUNDED INNOVATION EXPERTISE FOR SMES

Take a look at the exciting workshops and events we have scheduled – designed to give your business a boost as you begin 2023.

All are completely free for RISE members and eligible SMEs. 

🗓️ UPCOMING EVENTS AND WORKSHOPS 

 

Burgess Hill Means Business 
 

🗓️ 20 January 🕙 10am-3pm
📍The Kings Centre, Burgess Hill

Come and say hello 👋 to the team on Stand 27 to learn more about RISE and network with other businesses in this growing business district.

Find out how you can access fully-funded specialist support and expertise to help you innovate and grow your business. 

COME AND SAY HELLO

Innovation Clinics
 

🗓️ 24 January 🕤 9:30am-4:30pm

(60min slots)

📍Business & IP Centre, Crawley Library 

Free 60 minute session with a RISE Innovation advisor to explore new ideas, whether it is a new product, service, process or business model.

+ Introduction on how to manage innovation ideas from concept to value

+ Deep dive into your businesses needs and objectives

+ Explore opportunities

+ Develop a workable and effective action plan

+ How to access Innovation funding

BOOK YOUR FREE 1 HOUR SPOT

STEPS to Innovation – Test
 

🗓️ 24 January 🕤 9:30am-12pm
📍Freedom Works, Crawley

We have an idea that might potentially be our next innovation. So, let’s put that idea to the test.

This workshop will show introduce some key approaches to help you test whether your idea and concept will work. We’ll then explore how to get a “proof of concept” and how to test for strength and weaknesses of our developing ideas.

We then go wider and explore the concept design, supply chains, risks and impacts as well as the tensions around legal issues such as how to protect the ideas when we start to talk about them.
 
The idea may not survive these tests. We may go back to square one, or the idea may need to morph into something else. We’ll challenge, be prepared to break any collusion, and these evidence and instinct-based conversations will need to be no-holds-barred real!

TAKE THE NEXT STEP – TEST

Open Innovation through co-creation in healthcare

 

🗓️ 26 January 🕐 1pm-3pm
📍Online (Zoom)

 This workshop explores how communities and businesses collaborate in the co-creation and co-production of healthcare products and services.

Using examples from recent and current research projects, the session will explore how health innovation can be driven by, in, and for the communities they serve.

BOOK YOUR SPOT

RISE and Shine Innovation Club

🗓️ 27 January 🕤 9:30am-12pm
📍Tilgate Barn, Tilgate Park

Join the RISE community of active innovators for a monthly infusion of idea sharing, problem solving, collaboration, and best practises as we launch our RISE and Shine Innovators Club.

 
Each month we will meet at venues across West Sussex for 3 hours – we promise this will be enormously valuable as we combine the chance to network face-to-face with fellow RISE members, support each other with innovation challenges and opportunities, and get to learn from “Innovation in Action” showcase businesses from across the region who have successfully innovated in these challenging times

FIND OUT MORE

STEPS to Innovation – Evaluate
 

🗓️ 31 January 🕤 9:30am-12pm
📍Freedom Works, Crawley

How do you further evaluate your idea and get it ready for commercialisation?

 
This gritty session will get hands-on with:

✔️ Developing a prototype or technical roadmap.

✔️ Creating a tangible, credible business case that will underpin your business model. 

✔️ Looking at how to practically build a minimum viable product (MVP). 

✔️ Being challenged to consider the benefits of “open innovation” and whether you need it.

TAKE THE NEXT STEP – EVALUATE

STEPS to Innovation – Pilot
 

🗓️ 7 February 🕤 9:30am-12pm
📍Freedom Works, Crawley

 An exciting and sometimes frightening step…

 
Before you launch, is best to pilot your innovation. People get to test drive, to try out and the feedback is essential and can confirm or push back. These are the first night reviews. We do this smartly and in this session we’ll explore how.

From piloting to prototyping, from focus groups and testing to destruction, from Alpha to Beta testing and beyond. It’s a learning cycle and we may need to take a step back before we take further steps forward.

Learning, experimentation, feedback and feed forward…

For many innovators, this is a thrilling stage; for the egos, it can be painful!

TAKE THE NEXT STEP – PILOT

STEPS to Innovation – Scale
 

🗓️ 14 February 🕤 9:30am-12pm
📍Freedom Works, Crawley

 This step is the big one – launch and scale up.

 
How to develop a modern marketing strategy, one that is ethical, impactful and one that makes use of all the right data and market intelligence to hit the ground running.

 
How to deploy or launch the concept. How do we not only “launch” the innovation but also “land” it in a sustainable and commercially successful way?

TAKE THE NEXT STEP – SCALE UP

The RISE programme is receiving up to £603,514 of funding from the European Regional Development Fund as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020 in England. Grant Reference: 04R21P04430

The West Sussex Councils are also providing partnership funding to support the delivery of RISE, and through this, to provide help and support to SMEs in West Sussex.