Colin Shelbourn of EJ Jordan expected the Innovation Development Programme to help him take new products into new markets. What he didn’t expect was to start questioning everything his business was doing and how it was doing it.

This small Windermere company was built on the technological innovations of its founder, Ted Jordan, and continues his distinctive legacy, designing and manufacturing high end loudspeaker units for the home. As one of two multitasking Directors, Colin recognised the need to create time and space to think more strategically about the business and what the rest of the industry was doing.

Having already worked with Lancaster University on engineering student projects, he heard about the new Innovation Development Programme being run by the Management School, checked if he was eligible and applied to take part. It was to turn his thinking on its head.

“I came into the programme thinking that I had a product to sell,” Colin explains. “I’ve emerged from it realising that I have a business to grow. It was a whole new perspective on what we were doing. If you like, by the end, the business had become my product.”

“When you’re a small company, you don’t have many people to challenge you on a regular basis,” he says. “So it was very powerful to be on a programme that was structured to make you think differently – and to be working with other businesses, sometimes in smaller breakout sessions, who could point out things you’d overlooked. I found myself looking afresh at how the business operates, at what we can innovate, at our place in the market, what makes us unique and what differentiators we can have.”

It was during the second workshop that everything started to gel for him. “We were looking at how Steve Jobs said don’t compete by trying to be better, compete by trying to be different. That was when I realised how important this programme was going to be for us. I saw how crucial it can be to put the brakes on and understand that what’s right for the competition might not be right for you. How, as a small company, we can do something new - and be seen as different and interesting.”

Another highlight was the way the programme opens up access to the resources of the wider University, helping businesses to accelerate their innovation towards testing or prototyping new products. “They made introductions and gave us the opportunity to go and look at the facilities across the Faculty of Science & Technology. We saw that there were lots of people you can draw on who were used to looking at things from a different angle. I’ve already had help from the Engineering department with analysis, materials selection and manufacturing methods and I’m very excited to take the solution forwards. It gives us a clear route to build on our distinctiveness and achieve something unique.”

Overall, Colin says, the programme has left him much more open to collaboration with other experts and other companies. “It has given me ideas on different, less traditional ways to sell our products - which we’re actively in the process of developing at the moment – and a lot of that involves looking for closer collaborations with other companies and developing those as a route to the market.”

One example of an opportunity that requires a change of mindset, he says, is the retro market. “In one of the workshops we looked at how Polaroid were tackling this - and it’s very big in the hi-fi field as well. Instead of regarding it as a curiosity or a threat, it’s a challenge that can be turned around to our advantage. That’s what the programme does: it gives you a lot of extra confidence about how you tackle things, creates the space to question what you’re doing – and then helps you find a better way to do it.”

The Innovation Development Programme, part of Cumbria Innovation Platform, is a four month programme designed to help owner-managers, MDs and senior decision makers of SMEs to grow their businesses. This programme is fully funded and available to European Regional Development Fund eligible businesses. Contact Jane Hunter on 01524 593679, email innovationdevelopment@lancaster.ac.uk or visit lancaster.ac.uk/lums/idp to find out more.

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