Business

Incubation & Innovation as a Service

Published

4 years ago

April 17, 2022

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, the ability to innovate is not just a competitive advantage but a necessity. Companies that can adapt, evolve, and continuously innovate are the ones that thrive. However, innovation is not a solitary endeavour; it requires the right environment, resources, and support. This is where incubation and innovation centres step in, providing a fertile ground for ideas to germinate, grow, and ultimately, flourish.

Role of Incubation & Innovation Centres

Creating an Ecosystem for Innovation

At the core of incubation and innovation centers is the provision of an ecosystem conducive to nurturing ideas. These centers serve as catalysts, offering a range of services and facilities designed to accelerate the innovation process. From ideation workshops to technology partnerships, they provide the essential building blocks for transforming ideas into tangible solutions.

Accelerating Growth Through Collaboration

One of the key offerings of these centers is their accelerator programs. These programs are designed to propel start-ups and budding innovators forward, helping them scale faster and more efficiently. By leveraging the resources and expertise available within the center, participants can navigate the challenges of growth with greater ease and confidence.

Forge Strategic Partnerships for Technological Advancement

Technology partnerships form the backbone of incubation and innovation centers. By collaborating with leading technology providers, these centers ensure access to cutting-edge tools and solutions. From digital thinking to cognitive automation, the possibilities are limitless. Cognitive automation holds immense potential, with applications ranging from quality management systems to automated customer service agents.

Domain Expertise: Tailoring Solutions for Specific Industries

Incubation and innovation centers cater to a diverse range of industries, from fintech to healthcare, retail to real estate. By bringing together domain experts with deep industry knowledge, these centers are able to tailor solutions that address the unique challenges and opportunities within each sector.

Empowering Through Activities and Workshops

Central to the success of incubation and innovation centers are the activities and workshops they organize. These sessions serve as forums for collaboration, ideation, and skill development. Whether it’s a design lab, a system engineering lab, or a data engineering lab, these facilities provide the necessary infrastructure for innovation to thrive.

Critical roles in incubation and innovation centre:

To illustrate the impact of different roles in incubation and innovation centres, let’s delve into each specialised skill:

Domain SME Support: By leveraging the expertise of domain specialists, companies can ensure that their products and services are aligned with industry standards and best practices. From defining processes to validating deliverables, domain SMEs play a crucial role in every stage of the innovation process.
Researcher Insights: User research lies at the heart of successful innovation. By understanding the needs and preferences of end-users, companies can design products and services that truly resonate. Researchers help gather, analyse, and synthesise valuable insights, ensuring that innovation remains user-centric.
Workshop Facilitation: Workshops serve as incubators for ideas, providing a space for collaboration and creativity to flourish. Facilitators play a key role in guiding these sessions, ensuring that all voices are heard and ideas are explored to their fullest potential.
UX/UI Excellence: In today’s digital age, the user experience is paramount. UX/UI specialists are tasked with designing intuitive, seamless interfaces that delight users and drive engagement. From wireframes to prototypes, they bring ideas to life in a way that is both visually appealing and highly functional.
Program Management Leadership: Behind every successful innovation initiative is a strong program manager. These individuals oversee the entire incubation process, from inception to execution. They coordinate resources, manage timelines, and ensure that projects stay on track towards their goals.

Innovation and incubation centers serve as vital engines of growth and transformation within organisations. These centers provide a structured framework and supportive environment for nurturing new ideas and initiatives from conception to commercialisation. Through rigorous screening and selection processes, promising ideas are identified and allocated resources such as funding, expertise, and infrastructure. Innovators are then guided through structured programs and processes that facilitate prototype development, validation, and market testing. Successful innovations are scaled up and prepared for commercial launch, while ongoing monitoring and evaluation ensure alignment with organisational objectives and key performance indicators. Moreover, these centers foster collaboration, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement, driving a culture of innovation and excellence throughout the organisation.

In conclusion, incubation and innovation centers play a pivotal role in driving progress and propelling organisations forward. By providing the necessary resources, support, and expertise, they empower innovators to turn their ideas into reality. In a world where change is the only constant, these centers serve as beacons of innovation, lighting the way towards a brighter future.

Business

Ipsos Helps Brands Understand How They Get Customer Experience Wrong & Why It’s Costing Them Millions

Published

4 weeks ago

June 26, 2026

Matthew Wiles

For brands looking to succeed in the modern business ecosystem, the customer experience (CX) is not something companies can afford to ignore. CX is a direct driver of revenue, loyalty, and growth for organizations.

Ipsos, one of the world’s leading market research firms, helps brands understand that failing to focus on the customer experience can lead to lost sales, which in turn can translate to not only millions in lost revenue but also lost trust and credibility in the market.

How brands still get CX wrong

“The customer decision and desire to do business with brands directly affect the bottom line,” says Brad Christian, Chief Commercial Officer at Ipsos – Experience Practice.

Customer experience may sound like a simple concept, but many brands still get it wrong. CX goes beyond surveys and feedback. Leaders who fail to connect feedback in a meaningful way to goals such as retention, repeat visits or purchases, advocacy, and operational performance fail to deliver on their service promises. The emotional and functional disconnect can spell trouble for brands. The most polished advertising campaigns cannot make up for a frustrating customer interaction or a promise that a business cannot fulfill.

According to Ipsos’s internal research, many customers today see service as too automated and impersonal. More than half report that their experience is worse than promised.

These findings don’t just result in disappointed buyers. They result in lost customers, negative feedback, and a long-term impact on the business as a whole.

“Brands have to manage the entire customer experience across each and every touchpoint,” explains Christian.

Poor CX can be expensive

Executives can often underestimate how expensive a history of poor CX can be. Global losses can reach into the billions while leaders wonder what went wrong. In an age of rapid social media communication, a single negative interaction can spell disaster for a company, leading to reduced customer spending or the entire loss of its most loyal customers.

Those losses are not just reflected in lost revenue, however. Customer acquisition and marketing dollars can also be lost as companies continue to spend money trying to retain their customer base, often skipping right over the experience part of retention.

Poor customer experience can be a deep operating problem that creates a domino effect, decimating businesses from the inside out. These poor experiences can impact not only present and future customer acquisition but also business leaders and employees.

CX matters more in today’s business landscape

The customer experience has always mattered, but it may matter more to brands trying to make it in a modern, ultra-competitive, digitally-driven business landscape. Good experiences encourage repeat purchases, boost loyalty, and increase the likelihood that customers will go online and recommend a brand to others.

“Customer experience isn’t an isolated function,” says Christian. “It’s ‌part of a larger system that ensures that brands measure and manage customer experience data and then act on that data to drive action where customer experience gaps exist.”

Brands also have to seek to understand today’s customers, who expect experiences that are seamless, authentic, and relevant. As more and more companies hop on the automation train, they will want to reassure their customers that the human element that many people consider important still exists.

At Ipsos, six drivers of strong customer relationships form the bedrock of the company’s CX platform, something that they refer to as the “Forces of CX”: certainty, fair treatment, control, status, belonging, and enjoyment.

Customers want to feel that if they have an issue with a brand, it will be handled and that their concerns will be understood. They don’t want the customer experience to feel like a battleground; they want it to feel fair and human.

“Customer experience isn’t just a nicer experience,” says Christian. “It ties directly to specific financial outcomes, whether that be increased sales, greater market share, or stronger brand loyalty.”

How Ipsos helps businesses deliver customer experiences that matter

Ipsos turns customer feedback into reliable, actionable, decision-ready information. The company goes beyond simple satisfaction metrics and implements voice-of-the-customer programs, journey analytics, relationship feedback, and quality research.

“Brands don’t just need data,” Christian says. “They need measurements as to how they are delivering on their brand promise and predictive modeling to tie financial performance measures to those measures to help them determine where to invest to maximize the customer experience and understand what financial impact those investments might deliver for the business.”

Ipsos measures the interactions that matter ‌most and shows brands how each interaction can affect retention, share of spend, and efficiency. For brands that are trying to reduce the guesswork behind CX, Ipsos helps them move beyond cosmetic fixes to achieve real, meaningful change.

Customer expectations can shift on a dime, influenced by society, social media, and even changing trends. Ipsos helps brands meet those rapidly changing customer expectations with hard evidence and comprehensive metrics.

Today’s brands need to understand how to get the customer experience right. Ipsos has the insights needed to drive home the deep importance of CX in today’s marketplace.