A practical, immersive, interactive journey into the real world of business innovation

“Scale” is the last workshop in the STEPS series where we look to launch your idea and scale up!

STEPS is an exciting, interactive and immersive series of workshops to develop innovation knowledge and skills to progress ideas to commercial value. It will focus on how to successfully realise innovation in your business. How do you turn promising ideas into realisable products and services in ways that are responsible, responsive and ultimately successful?

You can dip into just one or attend all of the sessions.

Develop your innovation knowledge

What is innovation really all about? Innovation has been a buzz word in the business world for decades yet in recent years, both academia and industry have researched and implemented new approaches to innovation that can contribute to sustainable and commercial success.

During the sessions we’ll invite you to work in a confidential setting on real ideas, prospects and the potential of your own business to work on current innovation possibilities or to develop new ones. We’ll work with a range of powerful approaches including STEPS, which offers an effective narrative way of making innovation come to life in your business.

How we’ll work together

These hands-on, interactive, challenging will cover how to undertake deep market and community analysis, conduct pilots, effect trials, alpha and beta testing as well as moving beyond collusions of mediocrity, making bold decisions on whether to launch or let go.

Combining a mix of carefully chosen current innovation theory, practical approaches with stories of both success and failure, we’ll deep dive into the world of innovation, with a not always comfortable journey through what works and what sabotages success. Join us for a real, no-nonsense exploration of innovation in the 2020s and beyond.

Who is STEPS for?

It is suitable for business owners of Small and Medium-sized businesses, including social enterprises and any staff responsible for new product or service development or operational improvement.

The last STEP to Innovation is to SCALE

STEPS builds towards the successful launch of an innovation idea. This evolves over five stages, building like a great story. These stages climb towards the realisation of the innovation idea in the commercial world, delivered effectively, ethically and responsibly. We SCOPE the innovation idea (or ideas) then put those ideas to the TEST. Having rigorously tested we enter the stage of EVALUATION before we PILOT and SCALE up. At any stage the idea might not survive or need to be reframed or reimagined.

If you have taken the other steps to scope, test, evaluate and pilot your idea (not sure? check out our STEPS to Innovation programme here.) then we are ready to look at launching and scaling your idea.

So what will be covering in the Scale session?

Scale – 28th March 2023

Once you have the concept tested, evaluated, working and being given an impactful thumbs up by the market and key players in the field, the next step is the big one – launch and scale up.

Of course you’ll need a plan of how to reach the market and to “give live”.

This session will cover;

• 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.
• Big questions: How do you create an inspiring and celebratory launch? How do you create an inspiring and genuinely celebratory conversation around your innovation, in both the physical and digital worlds?

• 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?

• We’ll look at the nitty gritty challenges of understanding how to licence, build, make and deliver the innovation accurately, consistently and in as lean and green a way as possible, as well as where to look for and connect with funding partners, angel investors, crowd resources and supporters. That will include how to work with University and Innovation agencies as R&D partners.

Decide which other STEPS you need or have you missed a step?

Innovation is a learning cycle and you made need to repeat the earlier stages of innovation development, SCOPE – TEST – EVALUATE – PILOT – the details of these stages and our workshops are on our STEPS to Innovation programme page

Taking the STEPS together

As you can see, over the 5 sessions, the innovative narrative builds, a potential and fulfilling, sustainable and exciting story build and is delivered into the world. During these STEPS workshops, you’ll be on a journey of learning – plenty of conversation, discovery and inquiry, almost no slides but plenty of open windows into the realm of innovation, drawn from university research and real applied experience.

Start on which ever step is most applicable to your stage of innovation OR attend all the sessions to make sure you haven’t missed something critical in your research and development. Missed a session? Don’t worry we will be repeating them.

STEPS Clinics

Once you have taken part in one or more of our STEPS sessions you can book a 1-2-1 meeting with our innovation experts to discuss how you are going to implement the learning.

How can I take part?

Simply join RISE and we will check your eligibility for the programme. You need to be a Small or Medium-sized Enterprise and based in the West Sussex or wider Coast to Capital region.

You will need to complete a minimum 12 hours on the STEPS programme to receive a Certificate of Attendance.

Book your space and add your details on the button on the right.

Each workshop session is valued at £80 of State Aid support. If participants complete all five workshops the value of this workshop series will be £400. State aid information is detailed in our T&Cs.