What’s ahead in CivTech Round 10’s Exploration Stage—and why it’s important

So, the Challenges have been set, the successful teams selected, and we are excited to have now reached the third stage of the CivTech Innovation Flow, the Exploration Stage! We caught up with Joe Tree to learn more about this stage and what the participating teams can expect. 

Joe joined CivTech as Head of Product at its launch in 2016 and now leads the Accelerator and the broader Business Growth system. In addition to overseeing the design and delivery of the Workshop Programme, he works closely with Innovation Managers to select, support, and mentor the companies involved. Here's what Joe had to share about the Exploration Stage. 

Joe Tree, Head of the CivTech Accelerator

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 are 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 continue to work closely with, 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.