Our consulting services usually complement our Open Innovation and our Product Design and Development services. We are flexible and able to deploy a wide range of expertise and services to meet the needs of our clients, from small analytical projects on a single product, to global consulting projects with multi-billion dollar companies to develop comprehensive strategic technology plans, product prioritization, concept screening, and open innovation strategy. NurturEnergy has empowered our clients and distinguished ourselves with:
- Proven success – Principals have combined sixty years experience in open innovation engineering and consulting, generating outstanding ROI for clients in a wide range of industries
- Proven experience – Working with industry leaders such as General Electric, Ingersoll-Rand, Schneider Electric, Hussmann, Anthony International, Thermo King, Gates Corporation, and many others
- Proven expertise – Principals have direct expertise in material science, heat transfer, thermodynamics, nanotechnology, biotechnology, and chemical engineering
- Proven network – Managed network of over 250 engineers in industry and academia worldwide, coordinated through our cutting-edge iNurturEnergy Open Innovation portal
Mergers and Acquisitions
Most all studies show that between 70-90% of mergers and acquisitions fail.
Clearly due diligence on valuation is lacking, as well as proper planning and execution of the integration process.
Among the fundamental reasons they fail is an inadequate assessment of the target company’s IP, technology program, and manufacturing processes pre-M&A, and an ineffective roadmap for integration post-M&A. These cannot be evaluated properly only by a finance and management-focused team, which is typically the limited focus of most due diligence and post-M&A consulting.
Before going ahead with a merger or acquisition, prudent executives and investors should stop and make sure that the due diligence they’re conducting gives them the complete picture, and that they have the data they need post-M&A to effectively execute the integration.
Critical engineering, technology, and IP-related questions that often are ignored or
inadequately answered before and after M&As include:
- What is the value of the technology, product, and service solution pipelines?
- What are the strategic focus and investment requirements for manufacturing process improvements to achieve growth projections?
- What is the strategic and commercial value of the company’s IP?
- What is the efficiency and effectiveness of technology and product development human resources?
- What are the critical gaps in competency, capacity, or capability for key technology and growth projects in the pipeline?
- What are the strategic and cost implications associated with the competency, capacity, and capability gap analysis?
- What internal and external technology developments can disrupt the marketplace for the company?
- What technology developments can open new or adjacent markets for the company?
- What are the risks associated with the product and technology portfolios?
- What are the barriers to implementation of product and technology plans?
- What are the resource allocation requirements to achieve growth and manufacturing productivity initiatives?
- What are the technology and product development speed-to-market improvement opportunities?
- What are the opportunities to improve innovation and new product development processes?
A rigorous engineering and entrepreneurial perspective is critical before and after any merger or acquisition. NurturEnergy provides exactly that. And we provide the proven analytical tools and methodology to provide the data you need to make your M&A a success.
NurturEnergy’s experience in developing technology program assessments and proprietary tools and applications to assist companies in understanding, evaluating, and prioritizing their technology programs we also apply to due diligence for mergers and acquisitions.
NurturEnergy’s proprietary Strategic Technology Opportunity Process methodology considers the following areas and provides clients with an overall valuation of a candidate company’s technology portfolio:
- Core competencies
- Gaps in capacity, competency, or capability for key products and technology projects
- Developing market trends
- Customer values
- Market opportunities
- Market adjacencies
- Innovation resourcing requirements to achieve growth
- Comprehensive project prioritization
- Project timing analysis
- Technology and product portfolio risk analysis
Contact us and let us prove how invaluable we can be as you consider your next merger or acquisition, or are working to make the integration process a success.
Open Innovation Project Management
Open Innovation in its most fundamental form is outsourcing some aspects of R&D. Many companies have pursued this strategy, at least in an ad hoc, project-by-project manner. This approach has its advantages (control of IP, active management, limited risk), and disadvantages (lack of coordination across projects, limited incentive for Open Innovation partners to achieve breakthroughs, discontinuous or fragmented partnerships with universities and national labs).
We recommend a better approach that has proven to be very successful in our experience, and broadly true among technology companies who have increasingly come to rely on Open Innovation to accelerate innovation without further straining budgets.
-
- Create and actively manage an Open Innovation strategy across all appropriate concepts and projects
- Empower internal champions of innovation with adequate authority
- Foster a company-wide entrepreneurial approach to innovation by providing meaningful incentives to employees who create IP with high commercial potential: from bonuses for patent applications and patents awarded, to bonuses based on incremental revenue generated from innovations
- Develop wealth-sharing or IP-sharing arrangements with Open Innovation partners that provide meaningful incentive to Open Innovation partners to take risk to discover breakthroughs
- Continue to build a company-wide culture of innovation and entrepreneurship
For the above to work, many companies need external partners to build the Open Innovation project management capacity, and to accelerate Open Innovation across their R&D portfolio.
Let NurturEnergy add considerable value to your company by building and managing your Open Innovation network.
Concept Screening and Project Prioritization
NurturEnergy has developed an easy-to-use proprietary Concept Screening and Project Prioritization Application that allows your team to quickly screen new concepts and tie them to commercial opportunities. This allows you to make critical resourcing decisions quickly, instead of basing them on gut feel or relying on enthusiastic advocates of certain concepts or projects. Our tool and methodology provide objective, third-party analysis based on data provided by your team and augmented by research provided by our team.
Our application quantifies the overall revenue and strategic impact of each concept or project based on the following areas:
- Market opportunities
- Market adjacencies
- Core competencies
- Gaps in capacity, competency, or capability for key products and technology projects
- Customer demand
- Developing market trends
- Customer values
- Innovation resourcing requirements to achieve growth
- Comprehensive project prioritization
- Project timing analysis
- Technology and product portfolio risk analysis
Evaluation of Technology Programs
NurturEnergy’s team can use our analytical tools and technical experience to help you assess the current status of your technology program, identify gaps, prioritize projects, and accelerate growth while driving costs down. Our proven applications and expertise has been successful at a number of industry-leading clients. Let us explain how we can engage your company and provide objective data on the current state of your technical programs. That data will allow you to make critical resourcing decisions and will catalyze revenue growth and open new commercial opportunities.
Other Consulting Services
NurturEnergy also has significant experience providing the following services to leading clients:
Facilitating Ideations Sessions: We have worked with startups, mid-sized companies, and Fortune 1000 global corporations to engage their New Technology Development and Commercial teams, uncover their core competencies, outline technology-driven innovation, and develop new product concepts and market opportunities with the new ideas we co-create. Through understanding, we help you invent.
Magnetic Refrigeration
I. What is magnetic refrigeration
Magnetic refrigeration is a high efficiency, low cost, and greenhouse gas-free refrigeration technology, and because of these benefits it is drawing increasing attention as an alternative to the existing vapor compression refrigeration. Magnetic refrigeration is based on the magnetocaloric effect which occurs when a magnetic material interacts with a magnetic field. When the material is introduced to a strong magnetic field this phenomenon affects the material at an atomic level to create a rise in temperature. When the material is removed from the field it reverts to its original state and experiences a drop in temperature. The refrigeration process, and parallel process in compressor refrigeration, is shown in the figure below.
II. Company history with magnetic refrigeration
People from Nurtuenergy have done research into the effectiveness of various magnetocaloric materials in producing a significant temperature change for use in a refrigeration system. Various materials were evaluated including Gd5Si2Ge2, Gd5Si2.7Ge1.3, MnFePAs, LaFeSiH,Ni55.2M18.6Ga26.2, Dy, Tb, DyCo2 , (Hf0.83 Ta0.17)Fe1.98,GdAl2 and Nd2Fe17. Both first order magnetic transition and second order magnetic transition materials were tested. In addition prototype magnetic refrigeration systems were developed.
III. Ongoing research
We are continuing research and development of different methods of achieving efficient and cost effective magnetic refrigeration. The current focus of our work is in the area of home climate control systems.