Alberta Innovates $15K and $50K Voucher Program deadline extended from July 1st to August 1st.
You have 10 days to get an application into this round of submissions for Alberta Innovate's $15K and $50K vouchers. The deadline was extended awhile ago from July 1st to August 1st.
Establishing some context with customers, competitors and product development is essential in developing a good go-to-market strategy, a key component of technology commercialization.
That's the idea behind the voucher program; to fund market research and strategy projects for Alberta entrepreneurs. Companies can apply for vouchers to be used with a service provider for business and technology development services; most around product and market research. It's aimed to help small technology and knowledge-driven business in Alberta get their ideas and products to market faster, and enter into growth stage. From their website: "Assist small rural and urban businesses to move more rapidly from concepts and ideas to commercial products or services, thereby gaining a competitive advantage in domestic and export markets." Click here to read about the vouchers at Alberta Innovates.
At Mob4Hire, we received a $50K voucher about a year ago. As part of the private matching aspect of the voucher program, we had to add an additional $12K of our own money which funded an in-depth look at our industry, opportunity and pricing models / elasticity. Calgary Technologies Inc. (merged into what's now known as "Innovate Calgary") executed the voucher research in partnership with Ryan McDonald at Uncommon Innovation.
Ryan's team did an excellent job of providing several detailed reports which helped us make some pivotal decisions about the strategic positioning of Mob4Hire, one of which was understanding that brands, market researchers and ad agencies have a large need to access groups of testers for marketing research purposes in addition to mobile developers. This has lead to a shift in Mob4Hire positioning and subsequently doing work for customers like Adidas, Weather Channel, Payless Shoes, Continental Airlines and Futureshop/Best Buy; and also driving higher ARPU.
I'm a big believer in market research, whether it's product research, competitive research, pricing, marketing research; whatever makes you more focused as a company is a good thing. Costing only a few hours of yours and your potential partners' time to complete the probably-too-cumbersome forms, the voucher is a VERY inexpensive way to get some real insight into your opportunity.
