Overview
The biggest problem we face in Australia is commercialisation. Simply, our businesses are great at inventing stuff but poor at monetising new ideas. But Innovation = invention (new knowledge) + Implementation + Commercialisation. Australia invents but struggles to implement and commercialise. Companies don’t need your help to perform R&D and invent more stuff. They need your help to adopt and adapt existing technologies to create additional value to customers. This also includes developing new products that take advantage of existing tech, mastering new tech and accessing new markets.
NewLedge-Framework
NewLedge-Framework is Australia’s first ‘Innovation Implementation Framework’ for high-potential (small-medium-sized businesses) SMBs.
My research was validated by The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s (CSIRO). This means it is reliable and applies to companies in a range of high-priority areas.
Purpose-built for SMB owners and managers, NewLedge represents an entirely new approach, facilitating sustainable Innovation without the reliance on new products or costly R&D investment.
This diagram depicts the NewLedge-Framework from a top-level view.
Business Capabilities
Business Capabilities
Business capabilities are the inputs to the innovation process. Capabilities include combinations of human, financial, technological, and physical resources. You possess technical skills and knowledge, and that makes you a business capability. If you are able to operate a machine, then the combination of your skills and experience and the capital equipment is a business capability. Importantly companies don’t learn (yet anyway). So, it is up to you to lead and manage the company’s business capabilities.
Companies enhance innovations by leveraging current or existing capabilities. Where there is a capability gap, the company will build and / or acquire new business capabilities. Building and / or acquiring new business capabilities transforms innovations. Capability-building (including leveraging) is a really hot topic right now. You only have to google McKinsey to read what they are saying about this topic.
Nowadays you also hear lots of talk about transformation. However, it makes sense to leverage what you already know and possess. Enhancing innovations offer enormous value-addition at low-cost. Knowing how to achieve this makes you a critical resource and managers will identify that.
Professional Knowledge and Research Service Providers
It is no secret that SMBs struggle to innovate on their own. To overcome resource shortages, it makes sense to engage qualified service providers. For example, universities have an important role to play in the innovation ecosystem. They are both gatekeepers to new knowledge and sources of new knowledge. They can partner with SMBs to provide otherwise inaccessible facilities. This might include laboratories and testing and validation equipment. Unfortunately, in Australia, this does not happen often and when it does, it often yields underwhelming outcomes.
Reasons for this are numerous and beyond the scope of this article. One of the main impediments lies in university KPIs. Academics are rewarded for publications over industry engagement and outcomes. As I’ve mentioned numerous times, Australia doesn’t lack ideas. We lack commercialised outcomes. This represents a huge opportunity for you.
As graduates, I train you to identify and know how to access external resources. We focus on commercialisation – not invention. One way to fund growth is through government grants. The NewLedge-Framework includes out-bound knowledge to fund and monetise innovations.
My research condensed the most critical business capabilities into 12 innovation impactors. These are the inputs to innovation. They are ’12 Ways to Succeed with Innovation’. Using these business capabilities, you can enhance and transform innovation. You will learn capability-driven innovation (CDI) and at the end of this program, you will be qualified to apply it.
Knowledge Sources & Providers is one of the 12 impactors. Knowing how to leverage and build the capabilities that correspond to each impactor makes you a formidable asset to any company.
Innovation
Put simply, product innovation is the output from the innovation process. Products include goods and services. Processes can be commercialised but this are rare. Six Sigma is a process. So is NewLedge’s framework and methodology. We call our methodology Capability-Driven Innovation (CDI). Eventually, the NewLedge-Framework and CDI will be the industry standard.
AvocadoTech designed and built a machine that effectively turns off the enzyme that makes avocados go brown. Packages, frozen whole avocado slices are their product or innovation output. However, they were also able to license their production-process to overseas partners. In effect, they sold product and process innovations.
The NewLedge-Framework measures innovation output by the degree of technology-novelty and market-impact. Technology-novelty ranges from incremental to radical. Market-impact ranges from sustaining to disruptive. The way we measure the impact of innovation allows you to visualise a portfolio of products and track their growth and scale. You will learn to balance a portfolio between incrementally-sustaining and radially-disruptive innovations. We use high-performing companies with real tangible products to illustrate this to you.
This gives you an advantage over the competition. Not too long ago the Australian Federal Government was measuring our countries innovativeness by the number of patents we could ‘push-out’. Now they have wised up (a little) and use counts of ‘new to world’ products as a measure of innovativeness. You will be able to add enormous value to your company by clearly measuring, mapping and explaining the impact of innovation. You will fully understand the Theory of Disruptive Innovation and standout with this knowledge.
Competitiveness
Increased competitiveness is the outcome of the innovation process. The term competitiveness has fallen out of favour recently. People seem to believe you can’t collaborate if you compete and competing with each other is unsustainable.
“Competitiveness is people’s, organizations’ and nations’ capacity to achieve high outputs and outcomes and in particular to add value using the same or lower input amounts” (Carayannis, Samara & Bakouros 2015 p.16).
So higher outputs mean more impactful product and process innovations. Higher outcomes mean economic or societal (social) value that must be measured in some way. These are the only two ways to add value to a nation, namely ‘economic’ and / or ‘social’. The last part of our definition refers to efficiencies. To be competitive we need to add value with the same or lower input amounts. This certainly sounds like it addresses the sustainability question. Oh, and the idea that we must only collaborate and not compete is dangerous. While the market may care who you bold hands with (for example we need to be careful partnering with China and North Korea), in the long-run it doesn’t care ‘if’ you hold hands. What matters most is getting the job done better, cheaper or both better and cheaper. This is Jobs-to-be-done Theory. You will also fully understand Jobs-to-be-done Theory.
So how does the NewLedge-Framework measure competitiveness? Well, we use an innovation scorecard developed out of our research on high-performing SMBs. We use production, financial and market outcome measures of performance. Our scorecard is similar to the Balanced Scorecard. Except we select the key measures that capture, measure and report on a rounded performance. And we make sure they are attainable for even small businesses to access and apply.
I explained competitive advantage and sustaining competitive advantage in Module 1.
So, what does this mean for you?
Businesses today are on the lookout for talented individuals who can:
Increase the value of products
Improve business performance, across high-priority industries.
NewLedge puts STEM Graduates into the innovation driver’s seat to make informed decisions about new products. We provide specialised training to provide solutions to gaps in capability. We train you to think and speak about innovation with the confidence of a successful CEO. We achieve this by asking and answering the right questions, allowing you to make fast and effective decisions.
Custom NewLedge-Base assessments, diagnostics & insights will keep you connected to your decisions and focused on succeeding with innovation.
Here’s how we’re different from other training programs.
The NewLedge Advantage
Implement + Commercialise: We focus on innovation and implementation/commercialisation, NOT invention. Australia lags behind in making innovations profitable and we’re here to change that.
Evidence-Based Research: Instead of asking managers what they lack, we use our research around high-performing industries to identify the business capabilities needed to succeed with innovation.
Pan-Industry Framework: Our training program is based on a research framework validated by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and is applicable across a number of high-priority areas, including Medical, Resources Technology and Critical Minerals Processing, Food and Beverage, Recycling and Clean Energy and Defence products.
Mentor-Led Masterclass: Our NewLedge trainer (Lucas Merlo) holds an MBA, PhD, and is an entrepreneur who exited from his previous company for $$ successfully commercialised his own high-tech products
How We Work
At NewLedge, we:
- Research high-performing companies to identify how they are succeeding with innovation
Train you to build the business capabilities that our research has shown to lead to increased innovation and improved business performance - Focus on asking and answering the key questions that allow effective decision-making
- Apply a capability-driven research framework validated across industry sectors of strategic strength and competitive priority to Australia’s future
- Position you for careers in and across emerging, high-growth and high-priority areas
Keep our intakes small (5-10 per cohort) and combine learners from different STEM areas - Provide live, mentor-led training – not just pre-recorded on-demand videos.
- Encourage you to continue learning, even upon completing the course. We keep researching companies and adding and adjusting new capabilities as they emerge. NewLedge-Learners are kept industry-relevant and up-to-date forever.