Verhaert new Products and Services, an integrated product innovation group, helps companies and entrepreneurs to innovate and create new products, businesses and services. It started its activity almost 50 years ago in the space industry, and was sold in 1995 resulting in its downsizing from 150 to 15 employees. The company had to reinvent itself and find new growth opportunities. They decided to use IP rights on a technology that they had developed during their space activities to build a fall detection meter “Zenio” targeted at the elderly population. They worked with two external partners: (1) a knowledge centre at a university to access complementary technologies and (2) a health platform to commercialize and bring the new product to market. However, in 2004 the market for fall detection products and services was still too immature. The product failed, but their experience in product development and business planning created the basis for developing a consulting office division to support others in efforts to design, develop and bring new products and services to market.
Open innovation for SME's
