A CivTech Round 9 update
It’s been a busy few weeks at CivTech HQ as we are now in stage 2 of the CivTech Round 9 Innovation Flow - Challenge Launch and Selection. This means that we have reviewed the applications and have selected up to six applications per Challenge to go through to the Exploration stage interviews.
The Exploration stage, which sees the shortlisted companies spend three intensive weeks developing their proposals hand-in-hand with Challenge Sponsors, begins on the 25th of October. At the end of the Exploration stage teams will submit a revised written application and take part in a final pitch/interview session — both of which will be used to select the proposed solutions that will be taken through to the Accelerator.
We caught up with Joe Tree, Head of the Accelerator, to find out more about this stage of the process.
Joe Tree is Head of the Accelerator at CivTech
Joe joined CivTech as Head of Product at launch in 2016 and now heads up the Accelerator and the wider Business Growth system. As well as overseeing the design and delivery of the extensive Workshop Programme, he works closely with the Innovation Managers on selecting, supporting, and mentoring the participating companies.
The Exploration Stage is a three-week process which sees three or more shortlisted applicants work intensively with their Challenge Sponsor to develop their ideas and produce a much more rounded proposal that gives us a clearer sense of what they’re aiming to achieve through the Accelerator. The companies are given £5,000 to support their work through this part of the process.
Of course, there is no guarantee for the competing companies that they will make it through to the Accelerator from here so it’s a bit like an X-Factor bootcamp – we’ve narrowed the applicants down, now they need to show what sets them apart.
It’s an important time for the Challenge Sponsors as well. Often, they will find their understanding of the problem they’re seeking a solution to develops and they can add nuances to the way the Challenge is framed or even change direction completely.
So, the Exploration stage is vital to the overall process for both the applicants and the Sponsors.
As part of this stage, we also run a series of workshops which give the companies a taste of what they can expect during the Accelerator. We kick off with a Design Sprint workshop, an approach famously used by Google to iterate ideas very quickly. This is about momentum and progress, because we don’t want our applicants to essentially pitch the same solution as they did at the very beginning, we want to see that they have taken new ideas and suggestions on board and have developed those ideas.
We run additional workshops around accessibility, usability, and user research, three things that are integral to any solution that's developed through CivTech. And we host drop-in sessions with lawyers and finance experts as quite a few of the people who apply to the Accelerator have never set up a company before. The opportunity to get time with the likes of Scottish Enterprise, Interface and Techscaler, with whom we’ve just begun a new partnership, can be game changing for those new to the tech scene.
The last workshop we run, and perhaps the most important one, is to help the teams prepare their final pitches to join the Accelerator.
I should point out that it is not unusual for companies in the Exploration stage to realise they can strengthen their proposed solution by joining forces with one of their competitors and we welcome that too. It is also possible for companies to completely change their ideas at this stage if they feel their original one isn’t going to work.
So, the Exploration stage is about both competition and collaboration and is a really important part of the journey through the CivTech Accelerator.
If you want to see details of this round’s Challenges, you’ll find them here.