Innovation Funnel and Commercialization

This assignment involves analyzing the innovation funnel, a concept used to describe the process of innovation from idea generation to commercialization. The assignment includes a list of references to research papers and articles on innovation management and commercialization in various industries and sectors. The references are cited in APA style. A suitable title for this assignment is 'Innovation Funnel and Commercialization' and the meta title is '[FULL ACCESS] Innovation Funnel and Commercialisation Analysis'. The meta description is a brief summary of the assignment's content.

Innovation And
Commercialisation
Management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
LO1..................................................................................................................................................1
P 1 Explain innovation and its importance in comparison with invention. ...........................1
P 2 Explain how organisation vision, leadership and team work can shape innovation &
commercialisation...................................................................................................................2
M 1 Different sources of innovation......................................................................................3
LO2..................................................................................................................................................4
P 3 Explain 4Ps of innovation and use of innovation funnel to examine & shape innovative
ideas........................................................................................................................................4
P 4 Explain developments in frugal innovation with examples.............................................5
M 2 Analyse & apply the innovation funnel..........................................................................6
M 3 Evaluate the role of frugal innovation............................................................................6
D 1 Critically analyse how innovation is developed, embedded and measured....................7
LO3..................................................................................................................................................7
P 5 Importance of the commercial funnel and the application of New Product Development
for commercialisation of innovation.....................................................................................7
P 6 Build an Innovation Business Case for an organisation, including ways to access funding.
................................................................................................................................................8
M 4 Build a detailed Innovation Business Case.....................................................................9
LO4..................................................................................................................................................9
P 7 Evaluate the different tools that organisations can use to develop, retain and protect
knowledge and intellectual property......................................................................................9
M 5 Present supported evidence-based evaluation of these different tools..........................10
D 2 Critically evaluate the nature of innovation. ................................................................10
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................10
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
In an organisation, innovation is defined as a new idea to achieve competitive advantage.
Therefore, a significant part of innovation is creativity that businesses used to acquire wider
share in the market. Further, commercialisation is the process of launching a new product in the
market. It basically contains three major aspects ; the funnel, stage wise process and key
stakeholders are involved earlier. Production, marketing, sales, distribution and consumer
support are all take into account under commercialisation.
The chosen organisation is Connexica which was formed in 2006 as a spin out from
Ardentia Limited and is located in the UK. It is a Stafford based company that has developed
CXAIR i.e. search powered data discovery platform. The following report will explain
innovation and its importance while comparing it with invention. Apart from this it will cover
organisational vision, culture & leadership give shape to innovation. Further, it aims at
discussing 4Ps of innovation and use of innovation funnel. Moreover, it represents the
application of new product development process and create an innovation business case for a
company.
LO1
P 1 Explain innovation and its importance in comparison with invention.
Innovation not only means introducing a new product or implementing a new idea, but it
can also be defined as a process that consists of multiple activities to uncover new ways to do
work. It has been determined that, bigger opportunities are created through innovation & are
important for any company to survive, economic growth and success. Further, organisations that
innovate are able to take their business at top in order to recognise new opportunities. For
example, Connexica's products help the firm in both the public & private sector and it is also
considered as an award-winning company with a turn over of euro 1.3 million. Now it is looking
for making useful applications off its CXAIR platform to attain powerful insight from their data
and to assist companies to know better about their data. Invention is a process of creating or
making something new and unique, i.e. designing a new product (Otto, 2018).
Innovation Invention
It refers to implementation of an idea for It means, when an organisation create or design

product first time for a product. a new product or idea for a process that has
never been made before.
It adds value to something that already exist. Developing of a new product.
It is the combination of numerous products. Single product or process.
A process that starts with introducing a plan of
idea.
A process that begins with launching a new
idea or product.
Practical application of a new idea. An original idea
P 2 Explain how organisation vision, leadership and team work can shape innovation &
commercialisation.
A vision of an organisation refers to a clear, and comprehensive look into the future
which means it is a picture then an organisation sets for the future. Vision statement of a
company provides direction as it defines what a firm needs to be like, to be successful in the
future. The companies vision is to provide self service data discovery solution to everyone in the
business. Vision of an , Connexica's is to become leading Search Powered Business Analytics
solution. Further, it provides motivation to the workers and also attract potential employees, as a
result the motivated employees work effectively for achieving company's goals. Leadership in an
organisation refers to the management the control a group of individuals who meet the
challenges and goals defined by a company as a whole. Leaders are expected to use their skills &
knowledge to control the elements of the firm by implementing change. Team work in a
company refers to the collaborative efforts of a team to acquire a common shared goal. They all
work effectively and efficiently to complete a task in a given time frame (Moshfegh and
Mitchell, 2017). There are basically four types of culture which prevails in companies these are
power culture, role, task and person culture.
In context of Connexica, business entity have role culture,as each and every employee
in an enterprise are aware about their role nad they have sense of responsibility.
The culture of Connexica is Clan culture in which there is friendly environment, people
have a lot in common and it is similar to a large family. The type of leaders company have are
facilitator, mentor and ream builder. Team of the company worked effectively to make an
innovation of CXAIR i.e. search powered data discovery platform.

Innovation refers to change, and it has been observed that sometimes people,
organisations and team find this process as difficult & uncomfortable. At this stage, company's
vision, and leadership are considered vital in order to communicate, motivate and assist
employees to not only accept change but to grab it. Further, team work leads to; open
communication, efficient coordination, effective cooperation and high level of interdependence,
all these dynamics give shape to innovation. Moreover, if a leader is visionary and focused on
expanding the sales of the business, then their mind will search for opportunities that not exist, in
turn give shape to innovation & commercialisation. In addition, commercialisation is an
integrated step in innovation cycle in which teams are promoted right from the beginning stage
to introduce a value point. Therefore, all these statements sates that innovation &
commercialisation are shaped through vision, leadership & team work.
Leadership can be defined as the action of leading a group of people or an organization.
Different types of leadership are :
Autocratic leadership: Leader with this type of leadership centralizes power and they make
decisions. These type of leader gives orders, assigns tasks and duties without consulting the
employees.
Democratic leadership: Such type of leaders decentralise authority. Democratic leaders provides
workers a chance to participate in decision making procedure.
Laissez-faire leadership: These type of leaders avoid power and responsibility. Such type of
leaders passes their power as well as responsibility to their subordinates.
Paternalistic leadership : Such types of leaders have focus on providing guidance as well as
protection to their subordinates.
In context of Connexica, Democratic leadership is the approach that is adopted by
managers as well as leaders in a company.
Team can be defined as people working together for accomplishing common goals. The
different types of teams are functional team , cross functional team , virtual and self directed. In
context of Connexica, an organisation have cross functional team which has assisted firm in
accomplishing success.

M 1 Different sources of innovation.
There are basically seven sources of innovation defined by Peter Drucker in his book of
Innovation and Entrepreneurship and all these create culture of innovation. The seven sources
are:
 Unexpected :- this means that innovation can occur unexpectedly, it can take place by
chance.
 Incongruity :- under this, innovation takes place, when the need is in-congruent with
supply (Lopes, Farinha and Ferreira, 2018).
 Market structure :- it has been determined that the current market structure can give rise
to innovation. Company can achieve success if it finds how to give customers what they
exactly want.
 Process need :- innovation is based on ideas that occur in an individual's mind.
Employees think differently to fulfil the current needs of clients.
 Demographics :- organisations focusing on changing demographics leads to meet the
desired audiences.
 Changing perception :- under this, innovative firms finds that time when customer
perception changes & then they get ready to implement their new ideas.
 New knowledge :- this is another source of innovation as every year the world discovers
new areas and contributes to base of employees knowledge.

LO2
P 3 Explain 4Ps of innovation and use of innovation funnel to examine & shape innovative ideas.
Innovation funnel can be defined as model which is utilised by many organisations for
evaluating ideas and conceptualize products.
John Bessant and Joe Tidd introduced the innovation mix or the 4Ps model. This tool allows
Connexica to discover about the process of innovation that can enhance and bring to the
business. The model involves Paradigm, position, process and product and further in these all
4Ps are used in planning that assist to understand where company stands & how they can
innovate to boost their product, process, position and paradigm.
 Product Innovation :- this category of innovation mix is all about everything that includes
product or service which Connexica offers. One of the best example can be, windows 7
Illustration 1: 4P's of Innovation
(Source :- 4Ps – Exploring the innovation space, 2015)

and 8 have replaced Vista & XP and thus enhanced current software idea (Gavira,
Portilho Ferro and Quadros, 2016).
 Process :- this innovation category refers to various ways that an organisation adapt to
make changes in product or service they deliver. Foe example, improving operations in
the factory by using new equipments.
 Position :- position in innovation mix refers to targeting consumers based on segmenting
factors. After segmentation, organisation positioned their products or services to
segmented groups (4Ps – Exploring the innovation space, 2015.). Paradigm :- it is the last part of this model which is a specified innovation category that is
concern with the changes in the way organisation has done something.
Use of innovation funnel
Organisation make use of innovation funnel as it describes the steps that take place in
designing a product or process. It has been determined that the funnel allows ideas and thoughts
to be evaluated for validity by a process of filters, gates and rules. Moreover, its main objective
is that to create a large numbers of relevant ideas to the present business condition in order to
take business towards growth. Apart from this it has been identified that the basic aim of the
innovation funnel is to provide a graphic structure for thinking regarding the generation and
screening of alternative improvement options, & further joining these two in a concept of
product (Duncan and Elkan, 2015).
P 4 Explain developments in frugal innovation with examples.
Frugal innovation which is also known as frugal engineering, can be defined as a
procedure of decreasing the complexity and cost of the commodity and its production. It also
refereed to as the removing non-essential features from a durable products, such as a car or
phone, in order to sell it in developing countries. New business models, recreation of products,
and reconfigures of value chain are all discovered by frugal innovation as a process to server
users who experience affordability limitations, in a scalable and systematic manner. Basically it
is a concept that desires business to react to constraints in resources; whether material, financial,
or institutional & further convert these into innovative ideas & practical solutions.
Need of frugal innovation in Connexica :-
 Frugal innovation cut down funds to decrease debt in development economies through
which demand for frugal product or services will be raised.

 It has been observed that, in today's world the fast growing markets are developing and
improving economies where demand for frugal services & products is high.
 Another advantage for Conexica is that, new technology platforms are decreasing the cost
of some kinds of innovation, developing wide, new opportunities for frugal innovators.
Connexica adopts frugal innovation in order to trade its products & services at low price &
accordingly individuals living a life of poverty become consumers. Additionally, organisation
develops frugality to reduce the cost of research and development in the recessionary context of
low growth. In association with frugal innovation other formas of low technology products
giving solutions for low & medium markets that have been recognised as good enough
innovation. Further, it has been observed that frugality contributes to creating better products
specially for the market of developed nations (Dincer, 2017).
M 2 Analyse & apply the innovation funnel.
Development of innovation funnel starts with strategic thinking, as in this way Connexica
can make sure that there outputs of innovation are entirely aligned with their strategic objective.
Also, it doesn't matter how many resources are available to the organisation, the aim is to raise
the whole value of the company. Therefore, the final objective is to develop a strategic advantage
in the market which contribute value to their goal. Below are the steps of product innovation
management:
 strategic thinking
 concept
 plan
 develop
 quality
 launch
 lifestyle
However, it may happen that Connexica's innovation funnel is empty as they might be
concentrating on one product. Therefore, they need to deliver it more than just one product, that
means that not only pay attention on new inventions but also on their current work in order to
create & and manage their innovation funnel (Dezi, Santoro and Zhao, 2018).

M 3 Evaluate the role of frugal innovation.
It has been determined that frugal innovation is an ability to create considerably more
business & social value while importantly decreasing the use of scares resources. For companies
like Connexica in the established market of UK, frugal innovation enable the organisation to
have a quality product in order to compete effectively in the market place with cheaper rates at is
has been discovered that frugal makes improved products more affordable. Furthermore, frugal
innovation is considered as more than a strategy, it develops a new frame of mind. Connexica
sees its resource limitations not as liability, instead as an opportunity. As frugal is the most key
resource in the business, so organisations must be frugal with time. Connexica knows how to
use their assets, not only physical or service assets but also human resources as they know that it
saves time & gain gracefulness.
D 1 Critically analyse how innovation is developed, embedded and measured.
Process of innovation has three implementable stages . The first stage is identification of
goals that describes the course of action and introduces the motivational inspiration for the whole
innovation process. Further, when the goal has been identified then the stage that needs to be
accomplished after that, is stage second or third & executed accordingly stages to is short term
deliverables and third is near term development (Chun, Chung and Bang, 2015). To measure
innovation, organisation must begin to measure with:
 Past & present performance of innovation.
 Future innovation potential.
 Effective innovation capacity.
 Also, there are many key performance indicators that are utilised to measure innovation,
one is Innovation Sales Rate.
LO3
P 5 Importance of the commercial funnel and the application of New Product Development for
commercialisation of innovation.
The commercial funnel is also known as sales or revenue funnel that refers to the process
of buying that firms lead customers. It has been determined that having a commercial funnel for
any business whether running offline or online. Moreover, without a process in place that is
constantly being optimised & tested to increase value from every consumer than the business is

badly restricted in raising its revenues. It is Connexica that, organisations must not underestimate
the importance of funnel in marketing. If any company does not have a sales funnel, & making
efforts to attract new consumers & convert them into conversions. In Connexica, new product
development refers to an entire process of bringing new & fresh product in the market. Steps
involved are:
 New product strategy :- at this first stage, commany starts with clearly defining the goals
& objective for the new product i.e. CXAIR (Blevins, Azagury and Krummel, 2018).
 Idea generation :- here, internal & external SWOT analysis is done and by using it
generation of ideologies occurs. Further, it takes affordability, return on investment and
broader distribution cost in to account.
 Screening :- this third stage of new product development involves identifying better &
feasible ideas and removing those which are not good. All these screening process will be
performed by the company.
 Concept testing :- this third step refers to a concept of a detailed strategy version of an
idea. In other words, to make an idea presentable, is known as concept. All those ideas
that go through screening process are transform into concept.
 Business analysis :- under this step, estimate of product profitability, marketing strategies
and costs are decided for the product .
 Product development :- developing the product happens i.e. CXAIR.
 Market testing :- marketing mix is tested through a trial.
 Commercialisation :- launching the CXAIR in the market.
P 6 Build an Innovation Business Case for an organisation, including ways to access funding.
A systematic model that an organisation go through, that builds a business case using a
structured step by step approach, enabling arguments according to facts to build & expand. It has
been determined that a good business case for innovation concept requires demonstrating the
areas of clear discussion. Below is the creating step approach which will help organisation
towards compelling business (Bertoniand Tykvová, 2015).
 There must different innovative tools to begin the process but the need is to build the
project information a corresponding base. Further, it has been observed that innovation in
its primary stages is full of open questions and organisation must give efforts to give

answers as ignoring the tough issues does not help their case, so it is better for them to
address these questions in the best way.
 Then further it moves to building the business case preparation, cost and advantages
analysis, clarifying uncertainties etc.
 The next step involves consideration of clear assessment of tactics, competition and
implications & what business model does to create a case happens.
Connexica is now well recognised as a leading provider of analytic software. The company has
recently innovated, CXAIR that has delivered significant advantages for companies across a
broad variety of different sectors including retail, and local government. The product enables
firms to unify their data and create reports easily without technical knowledge, enabling
healthcare institutions and professionals to quickly access reliable data. Source of funding is
50% from the company itself and 50% from bank.
The Latest innovation by Connexica is CXFIRE (Connexica Fraud Investigation and
Reporting Engine) for which an organisation has been shortlisted for Best Public Sector Project.
CXFIRE is utilised as a technology which enables council to integrate thirteen localized
authorities’ data sets. It also enables councils to apply advanced data matching algorithms and
utilise these to identify potential fraud cases for investigation.
M 4 Build a detailed Innovation Business Case.
It has been observed that, a new business case is consists of six elements :
 The customer friction, in which it includes, customer situation, its needs and friction.
 Organisations new product concept which consists of targeted customer group, marketing
mix of new product or service.
 Current solution and rivalries.
 Number of turnovers, estimated turnover & profit.
LO4
P 7 Evaluate the different tools that organisations can use to develop, retain and protect
knowledge and intellectual property.
Intellectual property of an organisation can be anything from a particular manufacturing
process to plan for a product establishment. There are 4 types of intellectual property; patents,

trademarks, trade secrets and copyrights. Trade marks are names, symbols or images applied top
products to identify their source. Expression of ideas are protected by copyrights, and
furthermore once an organisation has contacted an agent they may start the process of
implementing patent or trade mark (Basaiawmoit, Dahlgaard and Thomassen, 2017). To protect
it companies should:
 They must make time to get smart on intellectual property and start educating themselves
on basics of copyrights, trademarks, etc.
 Decrease costs by doing their own IP searches first.
 Begin working with an attorney who specialises in this.
 Research for international patents if crucial competitor are outside UK.
M 5 Present supported evidence-based evaluation of these different tools.
Connexica make use of various tools for protecting its intellectual property safe:
 They secure their intellectual property both physically & digitally.
 They make a map of their own company's assets and then they see about what
information might lost and consider which assets are more at risk.
 They make efforts on their core IT systems to secure their IP, for example, they store
them through various documents using printers or scanners.
 Connexica is also aware that if they do not protect their IP then their innovation will be
less likely to happen.
D 2 Critically evaluate the nature of innovation.
Innovation refers to the implication of new ideas to the process, products or other features
of the activities of an organisation that result in increase value. Further, product innovation refers
to launching new product to the market or a significant change in the existing product. In
addition, process innovation means introducing new process for designing products or services.
It has been determined that the successful development of a new product results in distinguished
configuration of changes in costs (Akgun, Keskin and Etlioglu, 2017).
CONCLUSION
From the overall report it has been concluded that, in any organisation innovation refers
to development of a new idea for making a new product or making changes in the existing
product whereas, invention refers to making or creating of a new product that has never been

made before. Apart from this the report described the role of vision, leaders and team work in
shaping innovation & commercialisation. Further, it represented 4Ps of innovation in an
organisation and use of innovation funnel involves steps to design a product or process. Lastly, it
demonstrated different tools to protect intellectual property of an organisation.

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
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innovation? Evidence from young European biotech companies. Research Policy. 44(4).
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4Ps – Exploring the innovation space. 2015. [Online/PDF]. Available on:
<https://egyptinnovate.com/en/innovation-tool/4ps-exploring-innovation-space>