UMIC The University of Manchester Incubator Company Limited (UMIC) is The University's Incubator Facilities Management, and external business mentoring commercialisation company. UMIC’s business managers receive a significant number of requests for mentoring from entrepreneurs, inventors and innovators throughout the region. This was putting a strain on their resources, particularly having to deal with very early stage, underdeveloped ideas. The Rapid Evaluation was developed as the central part of an online “Innovation Portal” that UMIC uses to manage their resources more effectively. “Whenever we have a new lead, the first thing we do is send them to the Rapid Evaluation. This has certainly freed up my own time and on top of this the feedback we have had from users has been excellent.” Martino Picardo, General Manager

Lancaster University The Lancaster Business Creation 2 (LBC2) project, managed by Lancaster University seeks to assist University staff, students and local entrepreneurs who are interested in taking their business idea(s) and starting a new company. The Rapid Evaluation tool is used by Lancaster University as the gateway into the project and was customised with key questions added, to meet funding criteria. A few months after it was implemented, the Rapid Idea Evaluation has already generated enough leads to justify its cost and has proved to be a time efficient system for the management of new ideas. “I would definitely recommend the Rapid Idea Evaluation to anyone assisting clients with new business ideas. The idea management and validation process is now much simpler and faster! I can honestly say that the Rapid Evaluation has been excellent value for money” Jon Powell, Project Manager