The Innovation Exchange finds solutions to industry’s digital transformation challenges and accelerates corporate innovation adoption. In doing so it creates business opportunities for scaling SMEs in Ireland.
It does this by connecting businesses facing innovation challenges with ambitious SMEs that can fast-track the solutions. The Innovation Exchange facilitates a structured and managed process to connect innovators and innovation seekers, creating opportunities for business development and commercial success for both parties.
Key benefits
- Direct access to market intelligence about the innovation challenges facing industry/business
- Opportunity to pitch your solution to corporate buyers
- Access to training content, tailor-made for SME’s selling to large corporates, covering key areas such as sales, pitching, procurement and closing deals
- Access to a sales advisor that will support you throughout the process
- Access to feedback about your solution, both from buyers and your advisor
- Access to a large network of innovative SMEs for potential collaboration opportunities
Learn how The Innovation Exchange works
Watch Aurobinda De, Empeal and Conor Carmody, Programme Manager tell us why The Innovation Exchange is good for business for SMEs.
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How The Innovation Exchange has worked for Empeal
“The challenge to selling to large organisations is that the wheels move slowly, and the sales process is long. The bigger challenge is getting in front of the right people; those that make the decisions and fully understand what they are looking for. The Innovation Exchange solves both these problems.”
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Why SMEs should get involved
Conor explains in 60 secs why The Innovation Exchange is a “no brainer” for scaling SMEs. It gives them access to qualified customers through a structured programme and provides training and upskilling where needed.
What our collaborators say
Niamh Kelly
Founder of Tigim
As a startup, being part of the Innovation Exchange has accelerated our potential to partner with world-renowned brands. This adds huge value to us at this stage and into the future. The opportunity to listen to business leaders and hear the problems they wish to solve also makes collaboration a much more time-efficient process.
Aurobinda De
Co-Founder of Empeal
Innovation Exchange is a great initiative from Furthr. It enables early and mid-stage start-up get in front of targeted bigger players in the market and build a potentially long-term collaboration. It is probably The Ideal . It is hugely beneficial for Empeal having been able to present to potential collaborators – hopefully something will come out of it in the long run.
Marie-Therese
Co-Founder of AerNua
AerNua received huge value from the Innovation Exchange Programme. We worked with an excellent event coordinator, we were provided with the opportunity to pitch to multinational key decision makers, and permitted to attend very informative training events where our questions were heard, and valuable answers and direction received. We received both financial and moral support as we began this long journey as a start-up company. The Innovation Exchange put us in contact with the necessary resources which we required to address our weaknesses and to develop opportunities.
AerNua hopes to continue this new relationship we have established with the Innovation Exchange programme and Furthr.
Paul Henry
Founder & CEO of Intrinsicx
The Innovation Exchange is a fantastic programme that helps small, early-stage companies with ‘warm introductions’ to large enterprises that are pre-disposed to working with startups and potentially interested in the innovations they offer. The programme helped us to meet senior people in leading Irish and Global enterprises, produced tangible leads for us to pursue and was efficiently and professionally run by the team at Furthr throughout. We’d happily repeat the process!
Brian Leahy
Digital Incubation Hub Manager, Glanbia
The Innovation Exchange has been hugely positive for Glanbia, bringing value with every step of the process. It has given us exposure to lots of different companies, innovating in lots of different ways that can help Glanbia accelerate at speed
Working With Ambitious SMEs
