By Neil Simpson, Foundational Economy Innovation Account Manager

If you are finding significant challenges in bringing your brilliant innovation to market, you are not alone.

Working with businesses on the successful GMCA-funded ‘Foundational Economy Innovation Fund’ project, we’ve seen the same challenges crop up time and time again. 

Below are three of the most common barriers that companies in the Foundational Economy sector face – and practical ways to resolve them.

1. Dealing with Regulatory and Compliance Complexity

Most regulatory frameworks in Foundational Economy sectors were designed to manage existing business models, not anticipate new ones. So, when a business looks to do something different – like bringing AI into the care sector, for example, or running a community-owned care service instead of a private one – the rules may not fit at first.

Navigating regulations can be complex. You can end up spending months, sometimes years, working out which exact rules apply, how to prove compliance, and who needs to sign off on the new way of doing things. By the time you've navigated the approval process, your competitors (or your market) might have caught up or have moved on.

Solution A: Build regulatory literacy into your team early

Don't wait until you're ready to scale to work out the regulatory landscape. Map it out fully in your first 90 days. Make a plan.

Identify all the regulators, standards bodies, and certification requirements your innovation touches upon. Then work backwards: what do you need to prove? What evidence do you need to gather now while you're still in pilot? Who's already done something adjacent that you can learn from?

Many Foundational Economy businesses waste time building prototypes that regulators will never approve because they didn't ask the right questions early enough. Front-load the hard work.

Applications usually require you to demonstrate:

• ‘In Scope’ – relevant to that specific sandbox initiative.
• A genuine innovation that doesn't fit neatly into existing regulations
• Clear consumer benefit
• Appropriate safeguards to protect customers during the trial
• A plan for what you'll measure and how you'll demonstrate safety/effectiveness

Some examples of UK regulatory sandboxes include from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Care Quality Commission (CQC) and Ofgem. 

Bonus: being part of a government-backed innovation programme gives you credibility when you're talking to customers and other investors.

Solution C: Use regulatory experts as a competitive advantage, not a compliance cost

Most businesses see regulatory consultants as a necessary evil, expensive box-tickers you hire when you absolutely have to. There is a different way you can look at this.

Successful businesses treat regulatory expertise as a strategic asset. They hire people who understand the rules and understand how to design around them. These people don't just help you comply; they help you design your innovation so it's easier to approve, faster to scale, and harder for competitors to copy.

If you can't afford to hire full-time, consider bringing in a specialist on a project basis to help design your compliance strategy. It could save you six months and £50k in wasted effort.

2. Market Creation (When Your Customers Don't Know They Need You Yet)

When you are working in the Foundational Economy, innovations often have to be positioned a little differently. You're not selling a product. You're selling a behaviour change.

Incremental innovation of existing products is much easier to sell because the market already exists. "Our boiler is 10% more efficient": Great! I already buy boilers, I'll buy yours. Job done.
But if your innovation is genuinely new, for instance,  a service model that doesn’t already exist, a technology that solves a problem people have learned to live with, a way of doing things that challenges "how we've always done it", you don't have a market…yet. You have potential customers who don't yet know they're customers.

Adoption requires belief, and belief requires proof, and proof requires adoption. It's a chicken-and-egg problem. You can't scale without demand, but you can't create demand without proving it works, and you can't prove it works without early adopters willing to take a chance on something unproven.

In Foundational Economy sectors, this can feel insurmountable because:

• Customers are often risk-averse. In care homes, schools, and housing associations, money is tight, and they don't have a budget to ‘waste on experiments’.
• Procurement is designed for known solutions. Tenders assume you can tick boxes. New innovations often don't fit the existing boxes.
• Social proof is everything. You need to be able to answer the question, "Show me three other people like me who've done this, and it worked." How can you find early adopters?

Solution A: Sell insight, not information

Your early customers don't need more data. They're drowning in it. What they need is insight, a way to get better results with the resources they already have.

Try reframing your pitch from "Here's our new thing" to "Here's the problem you're living with that you think is unsolvable, and here's how we solve it in a way that doesn't require you to disrupt your entire operation."

For example, a digital care coordination platform pitched as "innovative technology" would be better framed as being able to "reduce agency staff costs by 25% by improving shift fill rates and cutting last-minute cover, while freeing up three hours per week of manager time previously spent on manual rota calls."

Look for "zero-pound partnerships", organisations that already have access to your target customers and that benefit if your innovation succeeds. Council economic development teams. Business improvement districts. Trade associations. Housing providers.

The more of them you can get to endorse your solution – "We've seen it, we've tested it, it works" – the more you can create social proof without spending a penny on marketing.

Solution C: Run public pilots that create advocates

The best marketing for a new market is evangelists, early adopting customers who are so blown away by the results that they tell everyone.

Design your pilot phase specifically to create as many advocates as you can. Pick customers who are:

• Vocal (active in their sector, well-connected)
• Credible (respected and listened to)
• Willing to share (happy to speak at events, write testimonials, host site visits)

Then make their success impossible to ignore. Measure everything. Publish case studies. Get them speaking at conferences. Turn them into walking adverts for your innovation.
One great advocate is worth 50 sales calls.

3. Skills and Talent Gaps in Innovation Management

You know your thing, very well indeed. Perhaps you don't have the same level of business skill. You're a care worker who's built a better staffing model. You're a heating engineer who's worked out how to retrofit 1930s housing. You're a food producer who's created a hyperlocal supply chain.

You're brilliant at what you do. But commercialisation requires a completely different skillset: business model design, pricing strategy, route-to-market, IP protection, financial forecasting, partnership negotiation as well as a whole host of other supporting skills and knowhow. Innovation management is a specialist skill, and you need specialist support to learn it.

Business schools teach you how to operate a business. They don't teach you how to take a disruptive, unproven idea and turn it into a commercial offer that can survive contact with reality. And here's the additional challenge: you can't afford to hire a full commercial team.

You're bootstrapped, grant-funded, or burning through a small investment. So, you end up trying to do it all yourself, while also trying to deliver your innovation. You can often find yourself firefighting rather than strategising.

Solution A: Embed "just-in-time" learning into your workflow

Don't try to learn everything. Learn what you need, at the time when you need it. Start by mapping your commercialisation journey into stages: prototype → pilot → scale-up. At each stage, identify the one or two skills that are mission-critical right now. Ignore the rest.

• For example, if you’re at the pilot stage, you will need to conduct customer discovery and establish basic pricing.
• If you’re at the scale-up stage, you will need to design route-to-market and partnership models.

Find bite-sized, practical resources (not theory, not MBAs). GM Business Growth Hub workshops. Sector-specific masterclasses. 90-minute webinars from people who've already done it. Learn it, apply it, move on.

The goal isn't to become a business expert. It's to be competent enough to get to the next stage of your innovation process.

Solution B: Find fractional expertise, not full-time staff

You don't need a Chief Commercial Officer. You need access to one for three days a month.
Fractional experts, experienced commercial, marketing, or ops people who work part-time across multiple businesses, are how smart innovators can fill their skills gaps without blowing their budget.

Find someone who has commercialised innovations in your sector (or an adjacent one). Bring them in on a project basis to help you:

• Design your commercial model
• Build your first pricing strategy
• Map your route to market
• Train you to do the basics

Or consider finding non-executive directors who can share their expertise, know-how and connections for free. Volunteering doesn't just have to happen in frontline services. Many established and emerging skilled professionals are happy to share their skills to help give something back to the community or because your project is exciting.

Solution C: Join a business support programme (and actually use it)

The most effective thing you can do for your business, especially at the beginning of a new project, is get the right support from GM Business Growth Hub’s Innovation Team. They aren’t just a team of very skilled and experienced innovation advisors, super useful training events and networking opportunities. They're peer learning networks.

The other businesses in your cohort are solving the same problems you are. Some of them are six months ahead of you. Learn from them. Share their understandings and innovative thinking. Share your mistakes with other people in your cohort so they don't repeat them.

They say it takes a village to raise a child, and it is the same with early-stage businesses and innovation projects. At the beginning, the strength of your network is often your net worth. A resource you can dip into again and again to invest in your innovation to really make it fly.

The best innovation programmes are about more than just the useful workshops. They're about the conversations in the breaks, the WhatsApp groups, and the "can I pick your brain?" coffees. Use them.

If you’re at the start of an innovation project – or you’re stuck and need a clearer route forward – don’t try to do it solo. Speak to our Innovation Service and we’ll help you sense-check the idea, map your next steps, connect you to the right people in Greater Manchester’s ecosystem, and point you to the support that fits (expert advice, peer networks, partners and funding opportunities where available).