Owlstone
Owlstone had ground-breaking chemical detection technology, but it needed to get investors on-side and work out a strategy for getting to market. Designing Demand Innovate service helped the business develop a revenue earning product and generate vital funding in under two years.
Background
Owlstone has developed a revolutionary device the size of a five pence piece that can detect a wide range of chemical agents even in extremely small quantities. Leading-edge micro- and nano-fabrication techniques make it a hundred times smaller and a thousand times cheaper than existing technology. There are numerous applications across different industries and Owlstone is working with market leaders to integrate detectors into existing devices.
Problem
Owlstone faced many of the problems common among high technology start-ups:
- Explaining its technology – particularly challenging as it’s invisible to the naked eye
- Communicating competitive advantage to a variety of audiences from technical partners to investors, customers and media
- Attracting investors, partners and high-quality staff
- Choosing the best short-term and long-term applications for the technology and the strategy for market entry.
Response
Owlstone joined Designing Demand Innovate service, working with a Design Associate (Oliver King, from design consultancy Engine) to tackle issues including brand strategy, corporate culture, the needs of people using potential products, product development and plans for market entry.
At an early stage, this work alerted the company to the possibility of broadening its target markets beyond the original idea of domestic military security. This was important in generating investor interest. MD Billy Boyle said: ‘The work helped us identify different opportunities that we hadn’t considered before and match them to the evolution of the technology.’
The length of time the company needed to bring a product to market was identified as a risk. The response was to devise intermediate products and services to generate income earlier and build the confidence of investors. ‘Investors are keen to make returns fast so we had to work to match the product and technology roadmaps,’ says Boyle.
To aid this process, with King’s help Owlstone sourced post-graduate design students to help generate new application ideas for the technology by building simple product models. The students created non-functional objects that illustrated the technology’s potential applications clearly.
In parallel, Owlstone worked with design consultancies to define a corporate identity and build a website. Boyle says: ‘It was a very important part of establishing credibility with investors and potential partners. We had technology and we had a team but we had to present ourselves in a way that made people take the proposition seriously.’
Impact
As Owlstone joined Designing Demand Innovate soon after launching in 2004, the design input came early enough to ensure that brand, market and product strategy evolved together. Barely two years later, the work has led directly to Owlstone developing a revenue generating product.
Tourist, launched in May 2006, allows would-be customers in different sectors to sample the technology and assess how it could be incorporated most effectively into their work. Boyle explains: ‘For clients it’s a low-risk way to evaluate the technology. Meanwhile for us the advantage is that we’ve done 80 per cent of the development up front and it’s just a question of making modifications to suit different applications. So we spread risk too.’
There was more good news for Owlstone September 2006 in the shape of $2.3m of fresh investment in addition to previous investment of $3m.
Participation in Designing Demand Innovate has left a powerful legacy for the business exploit in the future. Design thinking has not only defined product and brand development, but become part of core strategic thinking. Visualisation activities are now used as a key part of the decision making process, even by non-designers.
Model building was entirely new to the company but it has proved to be important in making its advanced technology intelligible to a wider audience from potential partners to national and trade press. Boyle says: ‘When you’re speaking to people from a non-scientific background it’s hard to articulate things like principles of operation. Visualisation has had a dramatic impact in helping us get the technology across. It’s part of everything we do. Aside from that we have a solid brand that will grow over time and that makes people sit up and realise we’re serious.'
‘If we hadn’t taken part in Designing Demand Innovate we would have missed a big opportunity. It exposed us to new ideas we could use straight away and which gave us shape and direction. Without it, we would have been a lot slower in getting to where we have.’
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