Whitespace accelerates innovation scouting for UK Government Agency

The context

Whitespace is a tech-based IT consulting service that helps businesses of all sizes develop their business in a customer-centric manner to achieve their growth goals.

Regarding their approach to Innovation scouting, before Novable they used traditional scouting services and tools, with little to no outsourcing to dedicated scouting platforms. For this reason, the search represented a slow and tedious process.

Therefore, they decided to give Novable a try. Being a dedicated scouting platform, they were able to work with a higher level of accuracy and relevance, finally receiving better results and saving quality time.

Startup Scouting for Corporate Innovation with Novable

The objective

Generate a qualitative and comprehensive list of potential innovation providers for a governmental agency in the UK regarding small object detection. 

The challenge

  • Increase the client’s scouting capabilities. Help boost the rate of companies that are relevant for their client
  • Test cutting-edge scouting solutions. To bulletproof their future scouting needs, whitespace tested a few scouting services to innovate their department.

The role of Novable

Hybrid AI-Human approach: Using NLP to understand Whitespace’s needs starting from detailed briefing from them, AI did the heavy lifting by retrieving relevant Companies. On the other end of the spectrum, the Novable Agents sifted through the output for quality control and delivered a tailor-made “Golden Basket’ (list of Companies). The Novable Agents helped adjust the process according to the customer’s evolving search criteria. Results matched the increasing level of details requested throughout the Campaign.

Semantic search: Direct translation of Whitespace requests into relevant results for each chosen topic.

Iterative process until happiness: Following an iterative approach, punctuated with recurrent meetings to discuss the ongoing scouting Campaign, the client was followed every step of the way for the whole duration of the project. Receiving regular feedback from the client, the Novable Agents refocused the current briefing to match the new conditions after each iteration, in order to improve the accuracy of the search and thus improve the relevance as time elapsed. 

What the process looked like:

  • Onboarding: After a 30 min meeting with a Novable agent to help submit the semantic search, the first delivery of results happened within 24 hours.
  • Review & iteration: After assessment of the first results (“match” or “miss”), the next iteration improves the algorithm and delivers a new list of results.
  • Scouting: At the 5th iteration, the market overview was completed and uncovered very special companies unknown to them.
Startup Scouting for Corporate Innovation with Novable

A successful outcome

Thanks to Novable, Whitespace found 75 unique Companies on the small object detection campaign, and took Whitespace only 2 hours and a half to review them. 20 were contacted by them, with a total time spent on the Novable tool of 8h – 12h or 1 man-day (1-2h/week for 8 weeks).

Some unexpected bonuses include:

  • The delivery of small players with advanced tech and early product development that are hard to find with other means – niche vertical actors,
  • The discovery of players that operated in a different market but served the same need – market horizontality.

The adaptation of their Campaign and necessities as the project unfolded – great service flexibility.

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