Aims

An exploratory project:

1. To design and test a conceptual framework of the area from academic and practitioner sources.
2. To identify low risk, quick hit research opportunities with the potential for fast dissemination into industrial practice, together with new perspectives on the area.
3. To deliver research proposals based on the above.

Draft recommendations for research

1. Develop a 'Fast start (1-2 day) process' where a set of tools, configurable to a range of business questions, could be used to generate ideas, mine for opportunities, identify and driver exploitation opportunities.
2. Focus on a particular business driver, important for manufacturing companies, that has significant relevance to current asset evaluation and exploitation. Examples include Servic(t)isation (service innovation); Product innovation; Licensing / selling assets to improve returns.

Other aspects/perspectives

Idea generation, asset classification, technology brokerage and asset valuation were identified by practitioners as particularly important. Desk research on the first two provoked the reflections that the IMRC should be highly skilled in the former (though this was not a research area for the IMRC); and that TRIZ may be a basis for an improved classification of intangible assets. Brokerage networks were so various and multi-faceted that research in that area would need very careful focus; and that asset valuation might best be tackled as part of a wider project where the problems firms face in selecting technologies was tackled.

Partners

• BAE Systems
• BAT
• Rolls-Royce Aerospace
• Dana Corp
• Glaxo Smith Kline
• Oakland Innovation Services
• Philips Electronics

Team

John Mills & Rob Phaal