This European Social Fund supported PhD research aims to establish a novel way of identifying new groups of customers for health and wellbeing services, enabling providers of these services to expand and reach more people.
The study is focusing on services that are based on the restorative properties of natural environments and ultimately aims to increase public access to our natural heritage. It is also hoped that its findings will create an incentive to preserve and maintain the environment.
Research in this area is important because ill health and loss of wellbeing costs the British economy billions of pounds a year; mainly due to stress related work absence (HSE 2006) and the avoidable prescription of drugs (Mind 2007). Developing ways to alleviate these trends gives us the opportunity to improve health and wellbeing, save money and also raise awareness about the natural environment; it is beneficial for both businesses, consumers and the environment.
The study will use positional innovation theory to identify distinct forms of innovation and will include a literature review and detailed analysis of case studies.
Positional innovation is one of the lesser studied members of the innovation family, Bessant characterises positional innovation as a change in the context in which an innovation is applied. A classic illustration of this is Haagen-Dazs repositioning ice-cream as a luxury item. However there is a disparity in the study of innovation that the majority of papers focus on the innovation of processes, products, or paradigms leaving the study of positions wanting.
This project is working closely with Cornish surf experience company, Global Boarders.