Welcome to The New

Dear Colleague

In this issue we bring you exciting news about Sugru, a new approach to multi-disciplinary research and new business models in complex value chains.

We have also recently moved to a bigger and better office. We hope you can join us for our office warming party on 25th November from 18:00.

Regards

Chris

The power of the crowd -  democratising investment

Sugru has successfully raised £3.5m on Crowdcube. This has broken several crowdfunding records; the fastest rate of investment, the widest geographic spread and the largest single investment. This clearly demonstrates the desire and willingness of private investors to seek out and back propositions they believe in.

Sugru is not only a fantastic product, but also a great story, well told. From the beginning, Jane and the team have worked hard to communicate the emotional as well as functional benefits of Sugru. They have built a community of passionate users who are ambassadors for the brand.

Viadynamics will continue to help guide the company in this exciting new phase as it uses the funds raised to expand its sales & marketing operations in North America, increase manufacturing capacity, improve margins, and drive growth.

The time for new business models is now

Whatever your business now, there is the intriguing possibility of delivering intelligent personalised solutions rather than just selling standardised universal products. With the emergence of ubiquitous sensors, sophisticated diagnostic and delivery devices, big data, the Internet of Things, and the pervasiveness of Apps, the possibility for disruptive innovation is all around us.

This brings many new challenges to traditional innovation practices. How do we create value for all parties and what in the end is our optimum business model?  We recently addressed these and other challenges, helping our client build a business model for a product-service system that integrates data gathering and dissemination, product use & performance monitoring whilst adding value across multiple touch points. We think this is the future. 

Tackling big problems in new ways

Viadynamics is working with the University of York on the challenge of anti-microbial resistance (AMR) as part of the EPSRC’s (UK’s Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council), ‘Bridging the Gap’ initiative. The aim is to identify research that could lead to novel AMR solutions. We have created a programme to drive multi-disciplinary, collaborative approaches to problem exploration and definition, identification of novel leads and the building of compelling research programmes that do not respect traditional scientific and engineering demarcations.

So far, seven research projects have been funded and we’ll be supporting the programme through to 2017.

Check out this video to hear a bit about the approach and what the participants felt about it.

News

Here's some of our latest news..