The final of the RCUK Business Plan Competition 2008 was held on the 20th October at Stamford Bridge, the home of Chelsea Football Club. KMis Alan Fletcher was there to represent the competition entry for the FlashMeeting project and FM technologies, running an exhibition stand with live demos of FM and Hexagon for the assembled attendees. The Business Plan competition sponsored by the Research Councils (UK) is aimed at encouraging the step beyond the research lab for ideas that could become successful businesses.
Whilst FlashMeeting did not win the competition outright, the team, led by Dr Peter Scott, received a commendation for the quality and content of the Business Plan. The Commendation was recognition of the potential for FlashMeeting as a commercial operation and of the teams ability to create a cohesive case for this.
This is the second award for FlashMeeting in 2008. As a winner of an e-Wellbeing Award earlier in the year, FlashMeeting has already shown its green credentials.
The FlashMeeting Business Plan was the culmination of several months work by Dr Scott, Alan Fletcher, Dr Kevin Quick and Jon Linney to identify the customer potential and competitor activity, build financial, company and sales models and combine them in a Business Plan. Whilst it is always much easier for Biotech and bio patent companies to spin out of universities, the RCUK competition made an explicit attempt this year to search beyond those easy wins for more challenging ideas to champion. That attempt was not entirely successful, as the winner was… guess what? However, it was neat to see the Research Councils at least trying to see the more challenging picture. And it is always satisfying to have external recognition for the professionalism of our team.
FM indeed, is already successful as a commercial proposition, with several live servers installed for a number of customers, the FM technologies team are now already working hard on the next steps for the project.
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