Most people's view of breakthrough innovation involves a solitary genius in a garage or workshop, but research shows that the majority of successful innovations are more like a recipe - the innovator draws upon a number of existing ingredients and brings them together in a novel way.

Armed with an effective specification, we use creative search phrases to find existing solutions that can be adapted to the project's needs. We use abstraction to try and distil the most useful function (MUF) so that we can search across industries.

Once suitable solutions have been identified we work with our clients to secure the necessary rights, through technology transfer, sub-contract projects and licensing.

A critical part of this process is the ability to constantly adapt the search to take note of findings and form linkages between apparently discrete elements.