Open Innovation in action

Image courtesy Boots Innovation Centre

In the year since, the £3 million centre has reviewed more than 400 propositions from inventors across the UK. The first product developed as a result is due to go on sale soon, and there are ten more in development currently.

“We want to attract new ideas from small companies and individuals in areas that we aren’t working in,” Ged O’Shea, the centre’s managing director, told Science|Business. Most of the people to have approached the Centre in the first year had got some sort of prototype. “It may be that there is still work to do and we can guide that, or we can do the research to prove a product is effective,” says O’Shea.

In some cases this provides the platform for inventors the go away and raise funding, armed with the evidence that Boots has an interest in the product. Another way to raise money is through the Centre’s relationship with Longbow Capital LLP, a founding partner of the Boots Centre for Innovation and a specialist investor in early stage healthcare companies.

Longbow was established in 2004 and has set up a Healthcare Fund to support ventures emerging from Boots Centre, and other parts of the UK healthcare industry.

Ideas and IP welcome

The centre is not only interested in prototype products, but is prepared to work on raw ideas or intellectual property also. “I think it is fair to say we have already advanced some ideas that would not have seen the light of day otherwise,” says O’Shea.

While Boots had an inducement of £300,000 from the Welsh Assembly Government to set up the centre at Swansea University’s Institute of Life Sciences, there is no formal collaboration agreement with the university – although Marc Clements, Swansea’s professor of innovation is a member of the centre’s board.

“We pay our own way at the university, but what we are finding is that there are mutual benefits,” says O’Shea. “They talk to us and we talk to them.”

Being sited at a university adds cachet and inspires confidence in those coming forward with ideas. There is also a significant advantage in being at arms’ length from Boots’ headquarters in Nottingham. “You often find that [inventors] are reluctant to talk to big companies because they fear they will get caught up in a bureaucracy,” notes O’Shea. “They may be frightened you will pinch their idea, and don’t like coming to a big, intimidating head office. Being sited near a university makes us more appealing.”

If it decides to help in developing a product, the Centre will want rights to sell it exclusively in Boots stores.

The centre is interested in ideas for products that improve and maintain skin, teeth, gums and eyes, improve digestive health; devices for self-monitoring of health; over the counter pain killers; products to improve the quality of sleep; anti-ageing products and devices; products to help diabetics manage their condition; and improved delivery mechanisms for beauty products and over the counter medications.

In the case of monitoring health, for example, O’Shea says there are a lot good ideas coming through. “A lot of SMEs are interested in this area, and they are working on innovative products that scientifically lead the field.”

Sensitive issues

Giving people the means to monitoring their own health, for example through genetic tests, biomarker analysis, or plotting cholesterol levels or blood pressure, and ensuring that users understand how to interpret the results, is fraught with ethical considerations and issues of customer education. Nutraceuticals and food supplements is another area that is littered with potential controversies over the need for – and the effectiveness of – products.

O’Shea says that Boots’ expertise and experience in dealing with a wide range of health and beauty products means it is sensitive to these issues and is able to handle them appropriately.

For example, the company employs a large number of pharmacists in its shops, and O’Shea says it could be that they will provide advice on novel health products, as they do now on medicines. “Products from the Centre could drive the chemists’ end of the business, we are not necessarily talking about products that will be on open shelves.”

Although the Centre operates independently of Boots own operations, O’Shea has a pretty clear idea what will be of interest, as he is also the company’s head of product development. “But, the decision on whether or not to stock a product is made by our commercial people,” says O’Shea. “We talk to them and introduce new products.”

And so to the proof of the pudding. Three products chaperoned through the centre are about to come on the market. Although he does not want to describe them in detail, O’Shea says that two are beauty and one a healthcare product. One comes from a small consumer goods company, another is a first foray into the market by an existing company and the third is the inspiration of an individual entrepreneur.

“In these cases we have probably helped most by speed of getting to market, but we do have other things in the portfolio where we are talking to research groups, further back up the chain, and these products will take longer getting to market,” says O’Shea.

A recent survey carried out for the centre appears to indicate that whilst filling gaps in Boots internal development capabilities it is also providing much needed infrastructure for turning ideas into finished products.

Respondents, ranging from established SMEs to lone entrepreneurs, said that funding either took so long to obtain that a company lost its competitive edge, or was simply not available for some types of project, thereby limiting innovation. All respondents believe that, even if they can obtain funding, they also need commercial advice to identify the route to market and develop business plans that address everything from manufacturing to logistics.

O’Shea said, “The UK has a long tradition of inventors who come up with wonderful ideas which other countries then commercialise. Meanwhile large organisations talk about ‘open innovation’ but few seem courageous enough to truly foster it.”