Future by Design has been operational for the last 10 years, a time during which it has focused on bringing several of its own products and services to market, as well as consulting to leading organisations on the subject of Corporate Innovation and new business establishment.

With a keen understanding of business innovation, operational and financial management, we have recently secured the experience of turnkey marketing strategic thinking and operational experience to enhance our client service offering.

This new capability enables us to assist clients in taking their products to market or, to effect the changes necessary to redefine client products and positioning within new or existing markets.

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”

– Leonardo Da Vinci

Our experience highlights that forward-thinking CEO’s are faced with 4 questions when it comes to Innovation:

• Should my business Innovate?
• If so, how do I go about it in the most efficient way for my organisation?
• How do I ensure that I give the project the greatest chance of success?
• How do I re-energise the effort that we have already started ?

Our approach will provide the answers to these perplexing questions for your business, and tailor make a solution to fit your company and enable it to maximise shareholder value into the future. It is based on a combination of practical experience and best innovation philosophies from our extensive research of innovation approaches from around the world. Future by Design is now part of an international association of best practice in innovation management.

Our skills lie in establishing the correct innovation management system and innovation culture for your particular business. These will enable prompt identification, filtering and implementation of improvement ideas and new synergistic business opportunities. The correct approach to Innovation Management will ensure that the project has the greatest chance of success.

Our solution will maximise the returns from your innovation effort, by paying special attention to program establishment and communication, innovation team recruitment and composition, idea generation and collection, concept design, opportunity screening and evaluation, culminating in the successful implementation of new ideas, products, businesses and strategies.

Our Innovation business draws on our knowledge and experience in setting up an innovation capability within client companies. In doing so, we give the client immediate access to our experience and know-how, which promotes rapid skills transfer and learning of in-house skills. This helps to accelerate and guarantee the success of any innovation or new business identification program.

Our Entrepreneurial Venturing business draws on our networks and experience to finance and facilitate the roll out and implementation of successful projects once they have been identified.

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”

– Leonardo Da Vinci

Entrepreneurs come up with good ideas and good products every day. Often they don’t have the time, or financing, or business plan or the marketing capability to get these products successfully to the market.  In some cases they simply need a “jockey’ to run with an idea and bring it to fruition.

Future by Design has the ability to do all these things for our clients. Our skills range from initial product evaluation and business plan preparation to marketing strategy preparation and roll out. We combine essential financial discipline with creative marketing solutions.

We offer our clients a consolidated partnership to convert their vision into value by applying our skills to the hyper-creative part of the business cycle. It is in this area that we excel.

Because we believe that success need not happen by accident, but that the future of your business should be by your own design, you will find that we are an inclusive company who value our clients knowledge and participation as we assist you in developing the fabric of that design; the fabric of your businesses future.  Your Future by Design.

We have spent the last few years, designing, implementing and delivering Innovation Initiatives for businesses in various sectors. Our speciality is in finding non-obvious solutions to business growth, value creation and commercialisation challenges.

Experience shows that a fresh, unbiased view of current innovation initiatives can cut through a lot of the frustrations that are experienced as the initiatives are bedded down and appear to become just another norm, with few of the promised results.

Our Service Offering includes:

• Re-energising current innovation initiatives where they are perceived to be losing momentum
• Innovation program strategy planning and formulation
• Innovation team structuring, recruiting and resource planning
• Preparation of innovation program sales and communication strategy to board of directors and organisation as a whole
• Presentations and interactive discussion of learning’s and experience in the management and implementation of successful innovation initiatives
• Interventions in roll out of innovation initiatives, including tried and tested methods for idea generation, idea recording, idea filtering, incentivisation and measurement systems
• Interventions to ensure the successful implementation of new innovations or businesses
• Ongoing consultation to innovation teams on various issues during the roll out and implementation phases, including ongoing progress monitoring and feedback
• Facilitated Mind Mapping sessions for both strategy and idea sourcing workshops
• Goal setting workshops for Innovation teams and individuals

“It always seems impossible until its done.” – Nelson Mandela

Any innovation effort comprises of four areas:

• Idea collection
• Idea filtering and ranking
• Business Case preparation
• Idea Implementation

In order to do this we advocate the establishment of a dedicated, focused but independent team that is not affected by the need to deliver on the daily fire-fighting of normal operations.

Our team provides that crucial independence from daily business issues, company political issues and any legacy issues that could impact on your innovation initiative’s objectivity and success.

The team has had extensive experience in leading the roll out of new businesses of major listed companies. Our focus is to identify and enable business opportunities from around and beyond a company’s core business.

None of the above can be accomplished successfully in terms of agreed results, within agreed time and cost budgets, without experience, a proven methodology and the right software platform.

Our experience in this field will prevent the inevitable cost blow-outs and disappointments inherent in embarking on this treacherous innovation learning curve unassisted.

“Conventional thinking is doomed. The winners are the innovators who are making bold thinking an everyday part of doing business.” – Gary Hamel

The need for innovation in most businesses relies on the premise that you cannot save yourself into growth.

It is driven by any of the following business imperatives:

• The need for enhanced growth beyond current strategic plans
• The need to find alternative ways of mitigating cost pressures going forward in a rising cost environment

• The need to create strategic flexibility for the business going forward in order to create options and choices for management
• The need to improve market perceptions of a business. Empirical evidence proves that those companies who are constantly innovating trade at a premium to those that do not. The markets price in an expectation of innovation and growth
• The need to adapt a tired business model in the face of global competition

Management must ignore the temptation to try and appease shareholders and analysts in the short term, by following through on their convictions. They will in any event be held accountable at some future period.

The challenge for any competent management team is to determine whether their strategy will ensure that once they are done with all the cost cutting and increased efficiencies, they have something else in their quiver to off-set the unavoidable effects of inflation on their input costs in year two and three.

“The winners will get below the buzzwords and be recognisable by their focus on the outputs of innovation or real value delivered. They will create actionable platforms for experimentation and a road map to scale early success”  - Anon

Many lessons will be learned along the way during any innovation roll out. Our approach aims to minimise the effects of any of these lessons for the client.

Our team has the expertise and experience to anticipate these lessons and enable you to pro-actively avoid them before they arise.

Lessons come in the form of both time and money, and we have found that innovation efforts are often prematurely abandoned as a result of misunderstandings related to some of the issues that can be anticipated.

Future by Design presented a summary of these lessons to the Innovation on Trial Conference held in October of 2008.

Please contact us for a consultation on how we can assist your company in this regard.

“Innovation is ‘a meta-stable’ entity, nothing will kill it faster than trying to manage it, predict it, and put it on a timeline.” -Vishva Dixit, VP Research, Gentech

Having an idea or concept is an essential part of any new venture or deal. Our skills lie, not only in originating or identifying these ideas, but particularly in turning these ideas into value.

Where we do not have the skills in-house, we carefully assemble the skills and capabilities that are necessary in order to make each deal happen.

Deals also usually happen at the 11th hour. Little notice, big upside potential but not enough time ! We pride ourselves in being able to operationalise these deals within the tight deadlines. Our team is used to getting it done against the odds.

Our participation and Value Creation involvement includes:

• Deal Funding and Financing
• Deal and Shareholding Structure
• Capital and Working Capital Finance
• Early Identification of the Exit Strategy
• Intellectual Property Protection
• Black Empowerment Introductions and Structuring
• Identification and Establishment of the most effective Marketing Channels
• Introductions to various potential partners and manufacturers both locally and abroad
• Research, Analysis and Financial Modelling
• Business Plan Preparation

” Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier ! I am talking about a gung-ho attitude that says, “We can change things around here, we can achieve awesome goals, we can be the best. Spare me the grim litany of the “realist” and give me the unrealistic aspirations of the optimist any day !” – Colin Powell

We believe that Innovation should be treated as a core corporate philosophy. In as much as companies seldom justify the costs they expend on the finance department, we believe that Innovation deserves a seat at the board room table right next to Strategy, Operations, HR, Finance and Information Technology.

The correct implementation and communication strategy will ensure that you foster a vein of continuous entrepreneurship

within your organisation, an entrepreneurial energy that permeates the entire organisation from top to bottom.

In this way, an Innovation Culture becomes central to the organisation, and we have found in the past that this not only impacts hugely on the entrenchment of the Innovation Program itself, but has far reaching implications into the organisation at large, as employees try and find better ways to do all their normal functions.

“If you think that even your smallest Innovation effort is ineffective, look at the power of a single candle in the darkness” – Future by Design Philosophy