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Technology Scouting

beverage production line

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] A Taste of Innovation for the Giants of the Food and Beverage Industry [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]The biggest players of the Food & Beverage Industry are positioned to innovate internally, creating new food concepts through their own well-funded research and development. Increasingly these corporate giants are also expanding their resources outside the company to innovate externally by nurturing smaller, sometimes more cutting-edge food start-ups. One means for expanding their portfolio of products is inviting creative and successful foodpreneurs to the innovation table, and in some cases, investing in their companies. General Mills, Tyson, Whole Foods, and Kellogg, for example, all offer pitch days and accelerator programs for startups looking for funding and expertise to bring more of their innovative products to market. Industry leaders who avoid diversifying their product lines to represent growing consumer demand are destined to see their food expired and forgotten on the supermarket shelves. Let's examine some areas the Food and Beverage...

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compass accelerate innovation

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text] Accelerate Innovation from the Front end to the Back end to Drive Industry Disruption [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]How do you keep the momentum of innovation solutions in your business? The success of your organization’s future growth will be determined by the products and services created from the front end to the back end of innovation, disrupting industries and creating significant market share.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="28px"][vc_column_text]The front end of innovation is critical in laying the proper foundation for a portfolio of projects to develop through a commitment to creativity, change, and growth. This is the period when opportunities are identified and new products or services are first considered. This phase includes Innovation Strategy and Ideation. When a team commits to the advancement of a new product, service, or business model they imagine a new way to approach a challenge, and communicate this idea for organizational implementation. The back end of innovation is everything following strategy development and ideation. This...

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network & collaborate

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] How do you best position your company to adopt an innovation mindset? [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="10px"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Hiring a Chief Innovation Officer or relying on Corporate Product Intrapreneurs to champion the innovation culture is certainly an intentional first approach for many companies. Maintaining innovative energy and focus from year to year and project to project will continuously be a challenge though unless your innovation leaders have an opportunity to recharge their creativity, share ideas and best practices, and consider leading innovation management platforms.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text] Innovation Networking, Best Practices, and Knowledge Sharing [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="10px"][vc_column_text]Upcoming innovation conferences are a compelling occasion to reignite your company’s innovation mission. Product development, research professionals, and UX or digital transformation creators can all find value and inspiration meeting with like-minded innovation thought leaders from around the world and across a variety of industries. Grow cross-enterprise collaboration and strengthen an organization’s innovation expertise at one of this season's conferences.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][qodef_separator position="center" color="#d1d1d1" width="100%" thickness="1"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width="1/4"][vc_single_image...

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space height="22px"][vc_column_text]The intersection of design and technical innovation come close to home in our workplaces and dwellings. Architects of today are tasked to design new buildings with emerging, energy efficient technology for the practical structures of tomorrow while maintaining beautiful and intriguing design elements. Home builders are provided a variety of new opportunities to make construction or renovations of their existing house more energy efficient, livable, green, and cost conscious. Ezassi supports innovation in architecture and building to make the environments we live and work functional and appealing.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="22px"][/vc_column][vc_column][vc_empty_space height="22px"][vc_column_text] Look to Switzerland for the Next Evolution in Sustainable Building Technology [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="22px"][vc_column_text]A great example of this new building initiative is a collaboration of Switzerland’s ETH, a premier technology research university, and NEST (Next Evolution in Sustainable Building Technologies), a modular research and innovation organization accelerating the innovation process in the construction sector. Their most recent projects include the HiLo building, the...

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_empty_space height="22px"][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text] Innovative Ideas to Reclaim Our Natural Environment [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="22px"][vc_column_text]You alone can not save the world.  Neither will our governments. How about industry?  Will they have the Earth’s best interests in mind when they create their next product for market? We ask, who are the real trail blazers along this confusing and winding path of necessary environmental change? It is not until the powerful, the inventive, and the noisiest change makers collaborate across industries, governments, universities and environmental NGOs with new green technology research, design, and significant strategies that will we see the greatest environmental challenges solved.  [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="22px"][vc_column_text] New Green Technology for Recycling [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="22px"][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width="2/3"][vc_column_text]Where does all the trash go and how can we dramatically reduce what’s headed to the landfills? Recycling is a not a new effort, but it is losing efficacy and studies show even the most mindful consumers recycle incorrectly. Luckily efforts are underway to bring new technology to an inconsistent,...

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space height="20px"][vc_column_text] New Industries' Solutions for Moving to a Zero Carbon Footprint [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="10px"][vc_column_text]Is zero carbon possible? The bright ideas coming from creative innovators prove we are developing and harnessing new technologies to eliminate the burning of fossil fuels to off set carbon emissions. The world emits about 43 billion tons of CO2 a year and 87% comes from the burning of fossil fuels like coal, natural gas, and oil. As the Earth's need for power grows, so does the necessity for innovative clean power solutions. University researchers, startup incubators, and power industry collaboration show promising disruptive technology to reach carbon zero goals. The commercialization and the opportunity for partnerships across these innovating platforms will bring positive and lasting change to the carbon emission reduction goals of countries worldwide.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text][/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="10px"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Carbon Neutral Start-up Technology [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="10px"][vc_column_text]Industries worldwide are focusing on how to achieve carbon neutrality. Innovative ideas and clean power solutions are appearing across university research labs...

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Technology and trends tend to move and change at alarming rates.  No industry is impervious to evolution. The only way to stay relevant is to make sure you are looking toward the future landscape and anticipating changes within your business before they happen. If you don't have a functioning crystal ball, research and analysis are the best way to predict the future.  A strong indicator of how technology and trends are changing in real-time is to pay attention to how you currently consume television and video content at home. Gone are the days of spending a Friday night at Blockbuster buying or renting physical copies of movies to bring home. It also seems the days of cable and satellite solutions are quickly on their way out. Streaming services are the future of in-home entertainment consumption, but that leaves broadcast TV searching for a new way to create revenue or else risk...

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Understanding your company's "technical right-to-succeed" is critical to the success of your business: it's what sets you apart from your competition. It allows you to provide the best products and services your clients and users have come to expect. It's essential to understand the entire landscape of your company's current technology and how it compares to the technology of your competitors and the future of technological innovation. This is where technology scouting and technology landscaping research reports come in to play an integral part in building your company's technology portfolio. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space height="30px"][vc_column_text] Technology Scouting [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height="10px"][vc_column_text]Technology scouting is an element of technology management in which emerging technologies are identified, technology-related information is channeled into an organization, and supports the acquisition of technologies.  The focus of technology scouting is on identifying solutions to an unmet technical or business need. When technology scouting, it's essential to precisely define your unmet need and create a roust...

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The concept of an innovation portfolio is still new to some organizations; however, it's been a topic of conversation among innovation professionals for years.  In 2014 Harvard Business Review (HBR) published the article, Managing Your Innovation Portfolio. They found on average high-performing organizations focus 70% of their innovation resources on core or incremental offerings, 20% on adjacent offerings, and 10% on transformational initiatives.  Even though the average was a 70:20:10 spread, they still reference other successful models depending on your industry and your level of ambition and allocations.  The biggest take-away from the HBR report and subsequent reports is that for an innovation program to be successful, the focus should be a mix of incremental (core), adjacent and transformational initiatives.  This mix will enable a program to deliver results both in the near term and long term.  In addition to finding the right balance, organizations need to have the right resources to deliver. ...

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]A critical aspect of any innovation management program is thoroughly understanding your own technology portfolio and how it fits within the technology ecosystem of both known competitors and potential collaborators alike. Innovation doesn’t occur in a vacuum – groups need to continually rationalize their internal technologies versus external technologies in their business verticals. Regular internal technical SWOT analysis (identifying where companies are strong / weak technically, where the technical opportunities and threats exist both long-term and near-term) better enable companies to define and own their particular technical space; as well as recognize the potential to expand their technical space over time. Technology Scouting and Technology Landscaping are powerful tools in the innovation management toolkit to achieve better technology portfolio understanding; but while these terms are often used interchangeably, these are not equivalent activities and often require different skill sets for mastery. Here’s how we at Ezassi think about these innovation management tools.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space...

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