Meet Alex Runne, your instructor. We start by clarifying and refining your product or business idea, and learn how to spot a good commercial opportunity.

Ideas that start in the clouds end in the clouds. In this topic we will discuss tools and techniques for creating a tight, actionable and commercially focused project brief.

Develop your expansive thinking technique, stimulus and reframing tools to make your idea bigger and better.

There are some things about your audience and product that all your competitors know - these are called 'hygiene insights'. The things that only you have uncovered are 'inspirational insights' - getting these right will make your business.

Moving from insight to fully formed idea - this week we learn the techniques to write your business concept that you, and everyone else can clearly understand and support.

A food concept is only as good as it tastes and looks. And eating is much more fun than talking about it! This week we explore the innovation tool of 'realness', and practice methods of bringing our concept to vivid, delicious life, both quickly and cost-efficiently.

Every new food concept needs to meet the real world eventually. By co-building, we learn research techniques for product testing and the power of further evolving a product or business idea with our intended consumers.

Where does your product fit in the market, and what are you replacing in your consumers’ lives? As our new product or business takes shape, we will about the 5 P’s (Product, People, Price, Promotion, Place) and see where our business fits in the market.

This is it - why should consumers pick you? The single hardest sentence you will ever write as an innovator and/or entrepreneur. No back story, no painstaking detail, no comparisons. What, in a few simple and clear words, is special about your product? This is the golden sentence you will tell everyone; it will be written on a piece of paper on your desk for years to come to keep you focused and honest.

Global giants in the food industry routinely spend upwards of USD$40m to bring a new product to market. We will discover the innovative and accessible tools we all have at hand to launch a new food concept for a few dollars less than that.

Please tell us about your experience throughout this course