Feasibility Study Grant

So how does a Feasibility Study work?

The following is a walk through of a fictional feasibility study and is intended to illustrate how the process works.

Tom is a freelance journalist who constantly travels to different locations throughout Scotland. He has come up with an idea for an application that combines the GPS functionality of his iPhone with the mapping functionality provided by Google. Tom believes that since he would use an application like this regularly then there could be a market for it. Being an iPhone owner he knows all about Apple's App Store and thinks this would be the ideal vehicle to sell his product. Whilst he is not afraid of technology, Tom is certainly no expert. Therefore while he feels that developing this application must be possible, has no idea how feasible his concept is in reality.

After searching the web to find organisations that could help him progress his idea Tom finds The Scottish Centre for Enabling Technologies web site. Having read about the feasibility study grant on offer he thinks his idea might be eligible and decides to contact them. Over the phone the Centre manager explains that all discussions will be completely confidential and that it's probably more useful if they meet face to face to explore how the Centre can best help him. A meeting is arranged.

The first meeting

Once the introductions are over the Centre manager explains that the Centre is a SEEKIT project co funded by Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise and its university partners. The universities provide a wealth of experience and expertise in enabling technologies that the Centre helps its clients tap into. In order to further reassure Tom of the confidentiality of the meeting the Centre Manager offers to provide him with a non disclosure agreement (NDA) should he want it. Tom decides he would like to sign an NDA but is happy to discuss his idea with the Centre manager in the meantime.

After Tom gives a brief overview of his idea, the Centre manager makes some exciting suggestions in terms of additional features that Tom had not considered. He also asks questions around who the target customer is and what the route to market will be. After some lively discussion the Centre manager suggests that as precursor to applying for the feasibility study grant the Centre under take some basic web research as part of its free information, advice and guidance service. The purpose of the research would be to establish if there are any major competitors and to better define the deliverables of the feasibility study. Tom agrees that this seems a prudent course of action so they agree to meet in two weeks time to review the findings.

The second meeting

Tom has now signed an NDA and the initial web research exercise has been completed. The output of the research is a feature comparison table which clearly shows that while various aspects of Tom's idea are provided by other applications, no single application has combined the features in the way that he intends. This means that Tom's product would appear to offer the unique advantage of a seamless user experience. On the strength of this Tom decides to progress with the application for a feasibility study grant. The Centre manager talks Tom through the simple application form and the criteria used to assess the suitability of the proposal. Tom is reminded that the feasibility study provides a maximum of £5000 match funded support and that his contribution to the project can be either financial or "in kind". Tom decides that he will contribute his time and purchase a second iPhone - because he needs his original phone on a day to day basis.

Tom emails the completed application form to the Centre manager and after some minor amendments the Centre manager approves it for submission to the university partners. Each university has a representative who discusses the feasibility study proposal with the academics and researchers expert within the field to establish whether they are interested in assisting the company. Within 5 days each university comes back with either an expression of interest or a decline. In this case a university technologist who has been experimenting with geographic information systems (GIS) on the iPhone is keen to help. The Centre manager advises Tom of the outcome and a 'kick off' meeting is arranged.

The 'kick off' meeting

The purpose of this meeting is to establish the scope, priorities and time scales of the project. £5000 can only buy so much university research time and so it is important to prioritise the deliverables of the project. Outputs from feasibility studies will typically consist of a feasibility report, proof of concept, technology demonstrator or a combination of the above. In this case Tom hopes to get a proof of concept that he can trial with some colleagues before taking his idea to market. From this point on Tom is encouraged to engage directly with the technologist working on his project but is reminded that the Centre staff is always on hand to offer advice should he need it.

Some time later...

Tom has had several meetings with the technologist and is happy that he has a good proof of concept solution installed on his spare iPhone that he can give to his colleagues to evaluate. Tom also has a copy of all the software developed for the proof of concept so that he could go to the market place to get the solution polished and produced, ready for sale through the App Store. The third output Tom has is a report detailing the approach taken and recommending future enhancements to the product. Tom thinks this product roadmap is really useful as it lets him plan a version 2 and version 3 of his product. It also highlights that aKTP project might be a very cost effective way of achieving this.

While Tom still does not consider himself an expert he has learned a lot from the project. He feels far more confident than he did to begin with as he now has something more than an idea...