Opportunity appraisal case study

An international group of manufacturing companies commissioned Sterling to assess the potential benefit of purchasing the intellectual property rights in an innovative design offering the possibility of increasing demand for the client's well-established products.

The first step was to understand the characteristics of the new design so time was spent with the client's employees and we were able to identify the sectors to study in detail and the type of input to seek. There followed a combination of desk research into published data and face to face interviews.

Our findings showed that risk aversion on the part of all the parties potentially involved was a greater issue than the simple product specification, performance, and cost. Whatever the market size, the challenge of creating favourable perceptions was major and would take probably three years to achieve.

The company decided that the innovation did not justify their development.