What is Digital Innovation Support?

Who is it for?

Any eligible business or sector within Lancashire can apply. You do not have to be a technology-based company to access the support. Many types of business want to utilise technology more effectively in their trade. This might be to develop a new idea for a mobile application to sell, or it could be to launch a new technology enabled service utilising expertise within your business. All that’s needed is an interest in using technology to innovate in your business.

To find out if your business is eligible, contact one of our business team cyberfoundry@lancaster.ac.uk or telephone (01524) 510788

A well-defined idea for a software application is not required; a deep understanding of digital technology is not needed. Most innovation grows from a business need of some kind. The LCF Digital Innovation team’s role is to understand the need and where possible identify and utilise digital technologies to meet that need, incorporating a ‘secure by design’ approach. All that is required is a starting point to develop your business idea. In our experience these can be broadly grouped into the following areas:

• Asset
• Approach
• Aspiration

Asset

You may be looking to develop a new revenue stream and have an underused asset. This could be a set of data that can be exploited, a physical asset such as a piece of equipment or even the knowledge and expertise of the staff within your company. Can any of those be unbundled and made accessible using cyber technology?

Example: A business providing a premium risk management consultancy was interested in developing smaller revenue streams to balance large contract work. The company’s knowledge of risk analysis was used to develop a digital tool that provided a subscription service to a risk self-assessment tool that could be used by a business regularly.

Approach

You might have identified a business opportunity already – either an idea for a software application or a way to use a specific technology to deliver a service. Whatever it is, the LCF team can offer some technical expertise to explore your idea, refine the concept and move closer to a product.

Example: An entrepreneur had an idea for a mobile application that supported athletes in training. The project team were able to help in developing the business model from a technical point of view, and create a prototype mobile application using secure by design principles, which could be used to attract investors and suppliers.

Aspiration

A goal for your business to achieve – you may want to move your business into a new market sector or wish to grow your client base. The project can offer some resource to explore how you might do that using digital technology

Example: A digital agency working for health clients wished to find a way to reduce missed appointments. The project team utilised cloud services and speech recognition software using privacy by design principles to develop an ‘intelligent agent’ able to deal with some simple enquiries and arrange appoints out of hours.

If any of the above scenarios fit with your business ideas, then the LCF Digital Innovation team have a broad range of technical skills that may help achieve your goals. Each of the above examples has its own unique security challenges that needed to be addressed at a design stage. In some cases, the secure design can be a feature that offers a differentiator in the market. Our workshop programme helps you identify which of these your business has.

What’s the business benefit?

Developing a new product or service is often a lengthy and costly process. Its rarely perfect first time and requires many steps and missteps to refine the idea and implement designs and prototypes. The LCF service can take on some of that risk for a small company, by providing resource to develop a digital product to a prototype stage.

A prototype can be used to assess the feasibility of a novel idea and make a decision on further investment. Alternatively, a prototype can be used as a demonstrator for gaining external investment.