Announcing British Design Innovation's Innovation Filter

This is an interesting initiative from the British Design Innovation in the UK - “30 leading design and innovation professionals team up to provide Innovation Filter for entrepreneurs & originators”.

Assessing the viability of ideas is never easy requiring a mix of knowledge and skills that is hard to found in one place, let alone one person. By pulling together a panel of this size of industry experts the BDI should be able to add real value to the filtering process to the benefit of innovative individuals and smaller firms without the financial or other resources to do it alone.

Says, Maxine Horn, CEO, British Design Innovation, “Whilst we are in a culture of Open Innovation, the majority of Corporates cannot view a proposition that is not patent protected due to the threat that doing so might cause to their own IP position. Thereby Originators commit to the cost of patent applications with little knowledge of whether their proposition is viable, and thereby their Patent valuable”.

Observes, Joss Newberry, Innovation Director, Opius “there is a significant drop-out rate of patent applications prior to the granting of a full patent, whether UK, European or global. Financial issues may cause some applicants to drop out but the fundamental issue for patent applicants is translating the idea into a commercially interesting proposition in an often time sensitive environment. The challenges facing patent applicants could be risk reduced with the existence of an organization that can join the dots –BDI is unique in its capability to do this with the support of the UK’s leading product and service design development Directors”.