“This is really important to me. It had taken all our lives to find each other and to have the ring blessed again by the Bishop will mean a lot. It means it will carry all those promises that Dave made on our wedding day.”

A North East Marketing & Product Development Consultancy adds new associates to the team.

Aegies Associates Ltd the leading North East Marketing & Product Development consultancy today announced that they have added two new associates to the Durham based team.

Day 5 - Creating A Robust Strategy for 2011

So why a band of gold as a title? Well a band of gold is most often though of a wedding ring a symbol of the Bond between Two People of of longevity and belonging. So what has this got to do with business Strategy? The simple and obvious answer is that Strategy is like the bond uniting your business ambition and a series of actions designed to get you toward those ambitions.

There is never a better time to plan your marketing and product development activity than over a glass of cheer so have one on us.

Day 4 - Creativity Lessons from a Family Christmas 

What happened was a massive leap in creativity, thought, innovation and on Christmas Day presents that had been well thought out, creative, hand made and loved by everyone.

Day 3 - Working with Academia as a key source of competitive advantage

I can't overstate the importance of knowing who is who, and who knows what in your local academic community. 

Be that a source of specialist knowledge in any aspect of your business (Marketing or Product Development) being connected with the local business school or school of engineering & technology could be that vital link to the latest tools and techniques or even expert advice.

Day 2 - Looking Wide For Technology Ideas

Having survived Christmas Day, its time to turn our thoughts to using those technology ideas we started thinking about in our first day of Christmas technology blog.

I remember many years ago now I was leading a design team investigating the design of a new radar system for inland river navigation craft. The kind of craft you find on the River Rhine.

The 12 Days of Christmas Blog

Day 1 - Christmas Day

Well it's Christmas day and I am sure that you are opening your presents. We just did ours and it prompted me to have a look at some of the technology that appears in the Christmas present box. This year Apple seem to feature highly with iPods, iPhones, iPads & mac book air's on the top list. But what about some of the kids toys? The point I wanted to discuss was the opportunity that might present itself in those toys. Of great interest is the motional feedback technologies in such things as the wii and x-box 360. These technologies have now been commoditised by the toy industry and so could be exploited in your next product development.

The ability to look beyond your current industry / product frame of reference is critical if you want / need to exploit competitive advantage.

Go on have a look at your own toy bundle and think where some of the ideas might work for you. We run visioning and technology audit events - mostly they are free. Take a look this presentation I did recently on picking winning product ideas. Still need some help give us a call to book a free audit. A very Merry Christmas to you all.

Today we will be holding a TVEP technology board strategy meeting. As the chair of the group - I am pushing the understanding of emerging technologies with in the TeesValley region. We hope to be announcing a programme of activity in the near future. Watch this space.

Now that the Tees Valley is the first LEP in the country - interesting things will start to happen. TVEP, is keen to exploit the opportunities that the LEP and these new technologies might offer for the benefit of its members and the region in general.

Well, we have finally made it to the shortest day of the year (daylight wise). 

Here is a picture of the first time in 300+ Years that a total eclipse of the moon has occurred on the winter solstice.

Following our recent Press Release on the need to Market your business and follow those good project ideas in the depths of a recession, we seem to have been generating some interest as you will see from this web based version of the story.

We are featured into days Middlesbrough Evening Gazette