UK & IRELAND

A British company pioneering the development of clean liquid air technology to achieve major improvements in resource efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution of power and cooling collaborates with a wide array of Open Innovation partners, including academics, industry leaders and experts in energy and cryogenics, to develop a range of efficient, low carbon and zero-emission technologies.

A young Irish SME becomes the leading supplier of Assigned Certification services under the Irish Building Regulations, thanks to the development of a software which reflects the needs, views and language of its users. By openly consulting all stakeholders from professional bodies and government agencies to tradesmen, the company enhances its reputation and becomes an industrial reference.

Anticipating a change in European legislation which would curb the use of biocides in their product range, a UK producer of consumer and professional antimicrobial technologies and products turned to one of the word's leading chemical companies to license a polymer for their new range of antimicrobial sanitizers.

If you spill a litre of oil into a river, it can potentially contaminate a million litres of water.  An English husband and wife team set up an environmental services company and licensed a Canadian technology which can soak up hydrocarbons and chemicals and remove toxins from water.  By listening to their customers, the SME has been able to design and develop new pollution prevention and containment products to suit the specific needs of their clients.

The world's largest fish vaccine delivery company, with headquarters at a university innovation park in Scotland and offices in Norway and Portugal, undertook an open innovation collaboration with a specialized research institute and a large company to develop and test a new technology which helped the SME create a novel service for customers and in the process increased its reputation and revenues.

AlphaBio Control's strategy is to drive its projects from ideation to commercialization thanks to various upstream and downstream partnerships.  Their experience shows how open innovation has to be considered as a dynamic process which is aligned to the needs of a project at specific points in time.  This means that new product lines need to be developed in different stages under a different focus until they are ready to go to market.  By extension this implies that partnerships often change as the project matures.