Innovation and Commercialisation Report: Mind Candy, Semester 1

This report provides a detailed analysis of innovation and commercialisation, using Mind Candy as a case study. It begins with an introduction to the concepts of innovation and commercialisation, emphasizing their importance in a competitive business environment. The report then delves into Mind Candy's organizational structure and vision, exploring how leadership, culture, and teamwork shape innovation. It covers different sources of innovation, including unexpected events, incongruities, and new knowledge. The report explains the 4Ps of innovation (Paradigm, Product, Process, Position) and the use of the innovation funnel to examine and shape ideas. Furthermore, it explores frugal innovation, providing examples of its application. The report also examines the importance of the commercial funnel and the application of new product development (NPD). It concludes with a discussion of intellectual property tools and their evaluation. Overall, the report offers a comprehensive overview of innovation strategies and their practical application within an organizational context.

Innovation and
Commercialisation

Table of Contents
Introduction .....................................................................................................................................1
LO1..................................................................................................................................................2
P 1 Explain innovation and determine its importance to organisation in comparison with
invention. ....................................................................................................................................2
P 2 Explain how organisational vision, leadership, culture and teamwork can shape
innovation. ..................................................................................................................................3
M 1 Analyse different sources of innovation, and how organisation can foster and develop an
environment and culture of innovation. .....................................................................................3
LO2..................................................................................................................................................5
P 3 Explain 4Ps of innovation and explain the use of innovation funnel to examine and shape
innovation ideas. ........................................................................................................................5
P 4 Explain development in frugal innovation and provide examples of how it is used in an
organisation. ...............................................................................................................................6
M 2 Analyse and apply the innovation funnel in an organisation...............................................6
M 3 Evaluate the role of frugal innovation in an organisational context....................................7
D1 Critically analyse how innovation is developed, embedded and measured. ........................7
LO 3.................................................................................................................................................8
P5 Explaining the importance of the commercial funnel and the applications use of NPD.......8
P6 Building an innovation case for Mind Candy or ways to access funding............................10
M4 Producing building case and measure their effectiveness using appropriate techniques.. .11
LO 4...............................................................................................................................................11
P7 Evaluating the different tools of intellectual property.........................................................11
CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................12
REFERENCES .............................................................................................................................13

Introduction
Everyone can innovate in this world of increasing competitive business environment.
Innovation basically refers to come up with new ideas or ways of doing things. Therefore,
placing innovation into any business can assist owners or entrepreneurs to save time and money
both, also provide them a competitive advantage to expand & adapt own business in market
place. Also, the aim of innovation is to create value for the company. When company wants to
introduce new product or service or ideas to the general market is known as commercialisation.
Factors that are taken into consideration under this includes production, marketing, sales,
distribution and customer support in order to attain the commercial success.
The report will cover a complete overview of the cited organisation current situation and
key activities. Further, it will explain innovation and its importance to employees of chosen
organisation in comparison with invention. In addition, it will explain employees of chosen
company that how vision, leadership, culture can shape innovation. Later it will include explain
the 4P's of innovation and the use of innovation funnel to investigate and shape innovation ideas
to employees. Afterwards the report will cover, the importance of commercial funnel and the
application of new product development processing for commercialisation.
Overview of company
This report on innovation and commercialisation is based on chosen company i.e. Mind
Candy. The organisation works for making entertainment for a new generation and winning the
hearts of over 80 Million children across UK. Mind Candy's online based concept of Moshi
Monsters allows infants to adopt their own virtual pet. It has been discovered that, the
company;'s founder has recently launched an innovation center known as Candy Labs that uses
the online space as a testing ground to create strong, character-based games and apps prior to
taking the products offline. It's first every famous animated film, Moshi Monsters; the Movie hit
UK and Ireland theatres. It has been determined that, the Mind's Candy vision is to build world
that fires the imagination. People imagine, create and breathe life into digital experiences that
bring joy to the lives of families across the world.
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LO1
P 1 Explain innovation and determine its importance to organisation in comparison with
invention.
Innovation in the business world is simple defined as a new idea, creative perspective,
new imagination in the form of device or approach. Although, it is also seen as the
implementation of better solutions that allow company to meet new requirements, unjointed
needs or current market needs. As Mind Candy company innovated Candy Labs, that specialises
in beautifully handcrafted candies with amazing taste and adorable designs (Akgun, Keskin and
Etlioglu, 2017). This was a new idea that was launched by the organisation to add value to its
company and to achieve greater heights.
Importance of Innovation
Various studies have proved that the importance or significance of innovation is
increasing in this current business world. It has been observed that there are many firms that are
implementing measure to strengthen their ability to innovate, a vital indicator of corporate
sustainability.
 Stand out from challengers :- the right innovation will enable the employees of Mind
Candy to offer something different and unique to their customers. This also, makes brand
stand out in the market place and makes it easy for company to raise earnings. Meet needs of the customers :- as everyone is aware of changes in customer's needs. So,
if the organisation stays stagnant the business will sooner or later flatfish. Therefore,
innovation is considered necessary in this case.
Invention and importance of invention
Invention is considered as the most vital product of scientific knowledge, as it is a unique
idea, method, constitution or procedure. It concentrates on developing new products or ways to
create existing product. Inventions and discoveries improves quality of life also brings dramatic
changes in transportation, communication and enhances standards of living.
Innovation leads to novelty and modernisation. Invention results in creation of something new
It involves an amalgamation of various
products or processes (Anderson, Potočnik and
Zhou, 2014).
It is concerned with singular product or
process.
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P 2 Explain how organisational vision, leadership, culture and teamwork can shape innovation.
As mentioned above, vision of Mind Candy is to create world that fire the imagination.
The company is best known for Kid's entertainment phenomenon. Also, its vision proved to be
the multi winning brand that rocketed to success online before expanding and they innovated
Candy's Lab due to their vision. Culture innovation refers to an environment that helps to support
creative thinking. Hence, fostering innovation in the organisation is the key to growing the
business and developing opportunities in ways employees have not yet considered (Winterhalter,
Zeschky and Gassmann, 2017).
Shaping innovation through leadership
Innovative leaders have a vision of the future, they not just look for immediate success
but also at well defined long-term goals. Further, leaders build trust among employees, which is
reflected back on themselves. Further, it has also been observed that possess expertise in that
area that needs innovation.
Through culture
It has been determined that an organisation culture is like an individual's personality. The
term refers to the beliefs and values that have existed in the company for a longer period.
Therefore, culture is considered as very crucial, playing a wider role in shaping innovation.
Through teamwork
When teams in an organisation work together effectively, they are able to achieve
company's objectives. A deficit of collaboration leads to duplicate effort or missing
responsibilities for tasks (Apfeldorf, 2018).
Through vision
Organisational vision allows the company to generate new ideas and those innovative
ideas generally comes from vision. The perfect solution is there in company's vision.
M 1 Analyse different sources of innovation, and how organisation can foster and develop an
environment and culture of innovation.
Innovation has become the most popular word of the industry in this 21st century. Various
emerging start-ups or businesses have proved that innovation can be done the way to the top. It
has been observed that many times people use the term innovation. According to Peter F. Druker,
there are seven sources of innovation.
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 Unexpected :- this source of innovation is exactly what it sounds like, Mind Candy's
employees have to expect the unexpected of they want to have a successful business.
Unexpected can be in terms of failure, success, surprise, etc. Workers must be ready and
well prepared for any potential results. A good example for this can be the entire electron
market faced down-turn in the stock market for some reasons. This states that,
innovation takes place unexpectedly. For example, many times innovators look for
something, and they stumble upon something else (Bali, McKiernan and Vas, 2016).
 Incongruities :- this source of innovation refers to thinking differently from competitors
and also from society. It means that by this, employees in the company must figure out
creative ideas to sell, & they can do this by thinking differently to discover a innovation.
 Market structure :- the current market structure can also provide increase to opportunities
for innovation. It has been determined that, this is how Google born as it shaped the
search engine market. Also, the world wide web gave rise to a market structure where a
search engine Google can embellish.
 Necessity :- it has been discovered that necessity is considered as the mother of invention
but also the mother of innovation. As it is already understood that innovation is based
upon brighter ideas and needs always give rise to thinking.
 Demographics :- it means changing in population's lifestyle, and it can also be source of
innovation. People have their own lifestyle needs for example, need to smoke. However,
it is considered bad and dangerous, so e-cigarettes are made to urge it.
 Changing perception :- changing thoughts about things can also give rise to innovation.
Prior the overweight human beings were seen healthier than the leaner ones. This is how
perception of people change and according to this concept, a flood of healthy & low
calorie food items came into market.
 New knowledge :- this is the last source of innovation. Further, it states that new
technology in any area or field is the source of innovation. Every year, new areas are
being revealed and many gets added to the current base of human knowledge (Bertoni
and Tykvová, 2015).
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LO2
P 3 Explain 4Ps of innovation and explain the use of innovation funnel to examine and shape
innovation ideas.
In this business world full of innovation, it includes 4 types of innovation mix which are
explained below:
 Paradigm :- to improve the way business performs companies make use of innovation.
This alteration can be radical, but keep in mind that not all changes are always positive.
 Product :- product is considered as the most commonly understood form of innovation is
that which introduced a new item or enhances the current one. The P of innovation is
concerned with giving product new shape, ingredients, colours etc.
 Process :- another P of innovation mix is known as process. This is concern with steps
involved in making producing a product or service. Therefore, it refers to the process of
creation of new product or service (Chand, Gopalakrishnan and Scillitoe, 2018). Position :- this 4th P of innovation can be considered as placing the product or introducing
it in the market. Positioning the innovative product in the market is based on the type og
product innovated.
Innovation funnel :- the main purpose of any product or process development project is to take
an idea from concept to reality by connecting to a specific product in order to fulfil a market
requirements in an economical form. The entire process starts with a wide number of inputs and
step by step refines and chooses from among them. Further, it helps in creating handful of formal
development projects that can pushed to faster completion.
Managing the development funnel involves three different task or challenges. The first
task involves widen the mouth of the funnel, this means the company must first expand its
understanding base and access to information in order to raise the range of new goods and
process ideas. The second task involves the challenge to narrow the funnel neck, which means
company needs to generate ideas that should be screened and resources focused on the most
attractive opportunities. Then comes the third challenge, which is to make sure that the selected
project or idea deliver on the expected objective when the project was authorized.
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P 4 Explain development in frugal innovation and provide examples of how it is used in an
organisation.
Frugal innovation process discovers new business models, reconfigures value chain, and
reconstruct product to serve to customers who experience extreme affordability constraints, in
sustainable way. Therefore, frugal innovation is the procedure that reduces the complexity and
price of a product or production. In other words, functional solutions are provided by frugal
innovation through few resources (Fojo, Mailankody and Lo, 2014). Frugal innovation is a
concept that urges businesses to reflect back to limitation in resources, whether material,
financial or institutional and in turn these restriction into innovative ideas and practical solutions.
For example :- a product or service that results from frugal innovation principles should be
priced as 50-75% lower cost than the present alternative and should have at-least 70-80% of the
functionality, without compromising the quality.
Need of frugal innovation :-
 Lacklustre growth and reducing funds to decrease debt, in developed economies will
raise demand for frugal products & services including innovative processes.
 Environmental constraints exists around the climate, energy, water and other resources
will progress demand for more frugal models.
 Today's fastest expanding markets are in developing and emerging economies where
demand for frugal products & services is more.
Frugal innovation practices are initially related with emerging markets. This is due to frugal
innovation produces outputs that fit rising markets. For example; the success of Amazon, a
retailer brand that does not have any store and simply transports it good from warehouse was one
of the earliest example of disruptive rise of digital giants. In recent years this is followed by
Uber, a car that shares firm that carries number of passengers worldwide and has affected huge
controversy among traditional transport.
Another example is that, Renault has a centre for frugal engineering in India where if
focuses on designing no frill cars like those manufactured under the Dacia brand. Using frugal
innovation, cars are now made in low cost countries such as Romania (Iga, 2018).
M 2 Analyse and apply the innovation funnel in an organisation.
There are various steps that the company can take to enable this process of innovation
funnel. Each an every worker in Mind Candy regardless of their ability should be allowed to
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bring ideas to the company. In order to inspire this process, it is suggested that a simple
mechanism for the re-enrolment of a potential idea be created. Organisation must encourage
employees to give rise to range of ideas that will be implemented and these are screened in
various ways and at various steps. Next step is to ensure that ideas are assessed on time and the
best way to carry this process effectively is by assigning responsibility to a forum of managers or
executives from various departments (Jarchow and Röhm, 2018).
M 3 Evaluate the role of frugal innovation in an organisational context.
Frugal innovation recalls an approach common in the early days of UK assembling
manufacturing. Frugal innovation is beneficial in speed, cost, passion, a lack of bureaucracy, and
potential new markets. Organisation are forced to accept thin profit margin to meet more
customers. Hence, various methods can be used from outsourcing more work to implement
mass-production tools. Therefore, a team might make more sense because each would make a
smaller commitment and have in-depth understanding of their jobs. Even with coordination cost
it might be less expensive and quicker. However, with frugal innovation it is frequently a good
idea to have the innovation valued by lot of people before it becomes visible tot hose who might
oppose it (Sigala and Kyriakidou, 2015).
D1 Critically analyse how innovation is developed, embedded and measured.
It is considered vital to learn that a clear definition of what constitute innovation is
important to the success of measure. There are basically few points to measure innovation:
 Past or present innovation performance .
 The demonstrated ability to build and capture sustainable and profitable value from
innovation.
 Future/expected innovation capacity.
 The activated capableness to realize the firm's full progress and innovation potential.
In various countries, innovation is measured through how many ideas per month are the
employees in the company are getting. Innovation is considered important at all stages of
development particularly in creation and diffusion of technologies (Radjou and Prabhu, 2015).
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LO 3
P5 Explaining the importance of the commercial funnel and the applications use of NPD.
Commercial Funnel : commercial funnel is the process to flow the management activities
that helps to transfer the stuff or input into the outcomes and fresh products. This reflect the
journey process of buyers and importance of better selling process goals. Commercialisation
funnel refers to the marketing activities that helps to connect product or services direct to the
buyers (Charles Jr, Schmidheiny and Watts, 2017). It allows business to connect directly with the
market and get good profit revenue growth. It helps to form a new developing results and better
outcome results and growth. The concept of sales funnel refers to the management styles. It is
very important term to be used in different manner to lead the market, to get customer attention,
to upgrade the new managing task and new leading approachable market for Mind Candy. With
the help of Commercialisation Funnel company easily perform the better marketing activities and
get best sources of outcome performance. It involves some advertisement campaign, new
promotional activities and new developing resourceful ideas. It is important to get customer
engagement, business profit.
Importance of marketing funnel is the part to recommend into more appropriate manner
to get the best target market people in order to beet the other competitors (Dumay and Guthrie,
2017). Along with that, it takes new leading sources in order to meet out the best possible
outcome results. Commercialisation funnel involves some essential stages which is very much
essential for the organisation. Moreover, it brings new managing successful business growth.
The main purpose of market of funnel is to attract the focus of customers in order to full
fill the best target results for the company profit.
Application of new product development
New product development is the new journey of product or services into the market. In
which already so many customers has been already exist and competing with each other goods
services. To produce new services or products every organisation should needs to follows
following applications or processes of NDP.
Idea Generation
This is the first stage of the new product development which is the new idea generation
goals. Apart from that, in this first process of new generation and new developing material. Mind
Candy has recently launched its own innovation that is Candy Labs in which they reproduce
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different innovative candies for the children to make them lovable and happy (Feeney and
Pierce, 2018). New idea generation, helps to discover the new customer approach and sources to
develop a new skills and goals.
Idea screening
Once idea has been generated, next process is to identified the new managing task that is
screening the process which has been selected in step one (8 steps of New Product Development,
2018). This second steps involve the activity which involves findings those goods and check
weather it is feasible or not for the customers or not. In this step company concerned or focus on
to identify the company weaknesses, company strength, ongoing trends, expected ROI,
affordability etc.
Concept developments & Testing
In next process NPD application involves to develop concept development and testing of
the new idea. In this process company identified the main concept of developing targets and the
purpose of new development (Freedman and Mullane, 2017). Such as the main concept behind
Candy Labs are to disclose the best apart from that, it discovers the new developing growth.
Moreover, this would help to discover the new managing sources. Basically, apart from that, all
the ideas has always consisted one concept behind which helps to encourage into more
appropriate manner.
Business strategy analysis & Development
This testing results helps the business in coming up with the final concepts to be
developed into a product (8 steps of New Product Development, 2018). In order to keep take
NPD process further company required to take the new process ahead and challenging. Apart
from that, it discovers the new managing successful business growth. This also helps to sustained
the better resourceful growth and developing resources. In this next strategy making process,
competition of the product, costs involved, pricing strategies, break even point etc. all these
strategies has been made on the basis of new process (Manzini and Lazzarotti, 2016).
Product development
Another process of NPD is to develop final product into tangible product. All branding
and other strategies decided previously are tested and applied in this stage
Test Marketing
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