Eureka! Winning Ways Idea Accelerator

 If it was easy to take innovative business ideas and turn them into new products that would result in new markets and new sources of revenue, more companies would do it.

When companies are at capacity, they don’t have the time to bring the next generation of products or services to market.  When business is slow, they often reduce their workforce and don’t have the people to focus on innovation and product development. It’s a challenge for even the best businesses to find the time, make the investment and focus on innovation.

With the support of the Tri-State Manufacturers’ Alliance (TSMA), a grant from WIRED and the expertise from Purdue University’s Technical Assistance Program, seven companies in the S.W. IN region had the opportunity to learned how to do just this: identify ideas that would result in new revenue and new markets for their company using a scientifically proven process.

The Eureka! Winning Ways Idea Accelerator is a process that teaches companies how to develop and maintain an innovation pipeline that results in a high degree of success for new products.  Ideas are evaluated, potential sales revenue is determined and a business valuation allows the company to determine if the idea will be profitable enough to pursue.

If the company decides to pursue the idea, an action plan is developed and a market assessment is prepared to validate the decision before time and money are invested.

Uniseal, a local manufacturer of structural adhesives was one of the first participants in the process that started in December 2009.  Stephani Catt, Uniseal COO, commented, “The process prompted us to pool our ideas and provided a structured way to evaluate their potential.  The scoring system gave us the confidence that we had an idea that was worth pursuing.” 

At Flanders Electric, an Evansville based company that provides electric motors and drives, Lou York, head of the Engineering Dept. said the process “forced us to use analytical information to make an informed decision; it  helped us select an idea that might not have been intuitive”.  Flanders has completed the testing on their prototype with an anticipated launch date for the new product in late 2010.