Selecting Innovations

ZeaEx business focus is on innovations for the sole reason that it is the area that offers the greatest potential return on investment with:

  • Growth in profit-return being greatest in the early stages of an innovation going to market and;
  • It provides the lowest cost entry-point to an ongoing and growing return

Crucial to the success of ZeaEx Ltd is its ability to identify and secure the right opportunities to support. To achieve this requires an in-depth understanding of what characterises a viable opportunity.

Investment in innovation is fraught with risks. To minimise the risk ZeaEx has undertaken a detailed study on innovations and success. One aspect was a two-phase analysis comparing and contrasting successful and unsuccessful innovations. Phase one had its focus on unsuccessful innovations, concepts and initiatives that were superior to the one adopted by the target market or community. Phase two was an analysis of the “points of divergence” between the successful and unsuccessful (yet superior) innovation. Through this process ZeaEx has identified the key “stressors” that differentiate success and failure in the arena of innovations. Most notable from the research is:

  • Bad ideas always die
  • The right idea doesn’t need the best execution
  • Being first counts for more than being perfect
  • There has never been an idea that failed because it was genuinely “ahead its time”.
  • Funding is NOT the single greatest barrier to success
  • Failure is significantly more likely to result from very mundane and rectifiable causes.

The above research led to the development of the process for innovation selection that is oriented towards eliminating the “mundane and rectifiable” causes of failure. This process includes, in part, the following dimensions:

    Quantitative Indicators
  • Need Identification
  • Time to market
  • Innovation/initiative security (how easily protected is it?)
  • Innovation/initiative stage
    • Innovation without an application
    • Application without a market
    • A market requiring an application
    • An application with a market
  • Level of input required
  • Extension potential
  • Market potential
    Qualitative Indicators
  • Assessment of the current progress to the desired objectives
  • Personality & character assessment of the Proposers
  • Review by an expert in the field
  • Appropriate level of control by ZeaEx

Through this process ZeaEx is able to identify the ideas with the greatest potential that already have people with the right passion, commitment and work ethic to make it successful and then insert into the initiative its own expertise as needed to translate a proposed innovation or partially developed initiative into a profitable and sustainable reality.