Online Critical Factor Assessment (CFA)

Coming soon!

On the success of the flagship 40 Point Critical Factor Assessment, the Canadian Innovation Centre will soon be launching the Online Critical Factor Assessment (CFA) Tool to help SMEs, entrepreneurs, innovators and inventors.

The Online CFA offers 3 levels of assessment and for a limited time, eligible projects will have 25% of the fee supported.  Details to be announced when the program is launched which is anticipated to be in late Fall 2010.

• CFA Snapshot - A free online assessment for those who just want a quick feedback on their project to see how it compares and stands against other opportunities. This can then be the basis for rethinking their original idea or progressing it to the next stage.
• CFA Snapshot Plus - A small fee based assessessment that provides third party feedback online based on 8 critical factors essential to assess potential commercialization success for an innovation.
• Full Critical Factor Assessment – A comprehensive fee based assessment of more than 40 critical factors which determine the weaknesses and strengths of the technology, business issues, market options, and challenging implementation barriers. Specific feedback from this report helps SMEs, entrepreneurs, innovators and inventors plan their path forward.

The purpose of all of these assessments help to determine at a very early stage ventures that have a good indication of success and point out the relative areas of weakness and strengths at the beginning of the venture. Being able to determine at an early stage the suitability of taking a business idea or concept into the marketplace prevents the venture from consuming inordinate amounts of time, energy and funding. It also helps to point the venture in a direction that will attain sustainable success sooner, which in turn will create new jobs that will foster economic growth sooner.

These assessments will help SMEs, entrepreneurs, innovators and inventors in Waterloo, neighboring communities and nationwide not only create better new products, processes or services (or improve existing ones), the online tool provides insight to support their efforts to commercialize these innovations more efficiently for the benefit of their business and their communities.  Working at the business opportunity level the various CFAs assess the SMEs, entrepreneurs, innovators and inventors’ position and also supports them at developing or implementing export strategies for international markets which helps the economy to grow locally and nationally. With the completion of a CFA Full Assessment, the SMEs, entrepreneurs, innovators and inventors’ capacity to innovate, adopt leading edge technologies or processes and develop new markets increases. This heightened ability means their local communities benefit quicker from the creation of new jobs needed to bring these new technologies and products into the marketplace.