About

If you’re a business in food and drink, tourism, energy, manufacturing or any one of Scotland’s key industry sectors that feels it’s not making the most out of technology, then this is a safe way to meet the kind of creative digital talent that could make your business sizzle. We’re looking for companies willing to share their greatest challenges with the kind of smart technology and ideas people who could rapidly prototype solutions to them in partnership with you. It might be that you are trying to:

1.       Enhance customer service or experience

2.      Find new customers

3.      Enhance existing products with added functionality and value

4.      Increase revenues from customers

5.      Reduce lost customers or solve customers problems

For business to take part, you have to sign up as a StramashLabs Industry Partner, and maybe attend one of our events this March. Alternatively, you can float your challenge online so others can take it up and maybe solve it.

If you’re sitting on an idea, then you have the chance to help it see the light of day.

Got an idea but waiting till tomorrow to make it happen? The time is now! Come along to a StramashLab event to rub shoulders with businessmen, geeks and experts from across the globe who want to work with you to transform your idea into a sustainable business. What are you waiting for?

If you have the ability to build technologies, then this is a chance to meet the kinds of businesses that already have routes to market, but need your smarts.

Are you clever with code? Build apps for fun? Come along to a StramashLab and put your talents and skills to the test in transforming ideas into prototypes, products and services in just one day. You might just meet the ideas person and business whiz kid that could take your tech skills into a whole new dimension. 

If you’re a potential mentor, investor or judge, you get first dibs at some new talent that no-one else has discovered yet.

Been there? Done that? This is your chance to share your experiences with the new talent of Scotland. They are thirsty for your stories of success, failure, do’s and don’ts. Come along to a StramashLab and be the guide, critical friend and role model these people need to make their dream a reality.

We’ve got a prize worth over £20,000.

We have digital agencies, service designers, product designers, business planners all ready to help make the idea a reality.

Above all, taking part in the competition by submitting your pitch to solve a business challenge will bring your idea in front of more of the kind of people who can invest in making it happen.

You can get involved in lots of different ways. Try these:

• First you must register on the StramashLabs site.
• You can float an idea, a one liner so people know what you might want to work on.
• You can become a mentor if you think your experience could help other people
• You can find mentors and potential industry partners on our platform.
• You can attend one of our events to meet potential team members and develop your pitch
• You then pitch online or at the events so your idea and team will be considered for the prize.

Be quick: the competition needs your collaborative ideas submitted by 5pm on March 19, 2012. In the run-up to this date there are four StramashLabs, events that will give you the gen on building your pitch, and help you meet businesses, tech people and ideas people that you can team up with. Come along to have a better chance of finding an idea and a team with whom you can win:

• Edinburgh: March 9th
• Dundee: March 10th
• Aberdeen: March 17th 
• Glasgow: March 17th 

Someone clever once said that a small group of people can change the world. This competition is about bringing disciplines, sectors and fields together that wouldn’t typically work side by side.

You have to make sure that in your duo or team there is a) someone who comes from one of the industries outside the creative sector, and b) at least one person who can write code and build the technology that the idea needs.

No worries. We’ll be posting all the guidance, advice and top tips from our mentors online, and many mentors are available online only, in fact.

The StramashLabs will also be reported in real time through Twitter, the Facebook Page and LinkedIn (follow the hashtag: #stramashlabs).

The value of coming along to a StramashLab is that it’ll be easier to make connections with people in the different sectors we’re trying to bring together.

You have to make sure that in your duo or team there is an industry partner, some of whom are on the Industry Partner page seeking creative and technology expertise to solve some of their business challenges.

There are some great examples of where businesses have discovered the potential of technology to transform their business, and we want more of them in Scotland. Keep an eye on the blog for some examples of what’s possible when digital and design thinking minds meet the rest of the business sector with a fresh idea.

Your partner must come from one of the industries outside the technology sector, like those on our Industry Partner page. They will be easiest to find by attending one of the StramashLab events, where we’ve invited people from these industries to team up with you and, in a day, begin to prototype some of the potential business ideas that could solve real challenges they face. The industries include:

• Aerospace, Defence and Marine;
• Chemical Sciences;
• Technology;
• Construction;
• Creative Industries;
• Energy;
• Financial Services;
• Food and Drink;
• Forest and timber technologies;
• Life Sciences;
• Manufacturing;
• Textiles; and
• Tourism.

A good pitch isn’t hard, provided you cover all the bases. Take each of these points in turn, make sure your pitch has even the briefest of answers to them, and you’ll be well on your way to having a chance of winning up to £20,000 of support to move your idea into production.

• Tell us the name of your product or service along with a compelling tag line: tell us what you do, for whom, in what context.
• Tell us about the potential user of your product or service and their journey from discovery of your product or service through to using it and having their problem solved.
  What’s their current ‘pain’ in achieving something, and how do you solve that pain to make life easier / cheaper / happier for them? What added benefit to you provide? If you can, tell us a real story that backs this up in less than 60 seconds.
• If you’re a Business-To-Business product or service, get specific in your definition of customers and provide a list of actual customers you have approached or will approach to sell your product or service.
• What do your customers tell their friends your product does? What “word of mouse” qualities do you have?
• Tell us who is not your customer.
• Show us that you have limited your focus. Which ideas have been discarded to get to this one?
• Quantify the value that you bring to the user, and how does this relate to your company vision and product tagline?
• You do have competition. Find who they are and tell us what your competitive value proposition is.
• Are you at risk of having your product copied? Can the competition leapfrog you technologically or with marketing, before you’ve had a chance to make iteration one, two or three? Tell us how you are going to avoid that happening.
• Marketing and route to market: How are you going to make sure that people know you exist?
  What social and traditional tools do you feel are going to bring you best value?
  What does your industry partner already bring to the mix?
• How do you make money?
  What is the price of your product? Why is this the pricing point?

You have to make sure that in your duo or team there is a) someone who comes from one of the industries outside the creative sector, some of whom are identified on the StramashLabs Industry Partner page (that is: Aerospace, Defence and Marine; Chemical Sciences; Technology; Construction; Energy; Financial Services; Food and Drink; Forest and timber technologies; Life Sciences; Manufacturing; Textiles; and Tourism), and b) at least one person who can write code and build the technology that the idea needs.

If you are employed by a business and are coming to this as their representative, then you will have submitted your idea on behalf of your organisation. This is fine.

It is possible that if you work for a company and are coming to this competition as an independent member of the public, that the IP developed could be claimed by your company at a later date. Therefore, you should check with your employer.

Bear in mind, though, that you are coming to this competition to meet other business or people who can build your idea, and that the ownership of the idea will therefore become shared at some point in the future. If you seek investment, perhaps as a result of winning the competition, you will have to make a decision with the investor and your business partners about how to split up ownership of the idea in the form of shares in a new business.

Ideas need to be built before they have any worth. In order to build most ideas you need time and time needs money. VCs and angel investors, who this competition will put in front of you, are the people that will invest the money to make them happen.

Most VCs will refuse to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (a form that keeps your idea secret) for a variety of reasons (many are outlined well by Anil Dash). Above all, it’s unlikely that any idea is 100% original, and so it’s impossible really to tell if your idea has been stolen by someone else or simply someone else has been working on the same problem, at the same time.

At the end of the day, the ideas that get executed well are the ones that make it big. If you don’t tell anyone about your idea, it’s unlikely you’ll find a partner to make it work. If you don’t need a partner to make it work, then you shouldn’t be in this competition!

Experts from the world of business, technology, start-up and investment. We have invited people who are brilliant at identifying people who have got what it takes to make a business work. Of course, any judge who has a conflict of interest with anyone involved in the ideas will be required to declare this and not be allowed to take part in the judging.

Judges’ names and biographies will appear here soon, as they are confirmed.

The Scottish Government and Scottish Enterprise are the bodies proposing and supporting this competition. The competition is run by startup development people at NoTosh Limited (Edinburgh), and the service design experts at We Are Snook Limited (Glasgow).