A successful experiment: Test Like the Best

The Innofest method

People often think their product or service is the best thing to have ever existed. But is that truly the case? This is where Innofest, who already assisted more than 200 start-ups, chimes in. Is my innovation good enough? Will consumers be interested in my invention? What can I still do before releasing my product? The answer: test, test, test. Like the best.

You have probably come across the Test Like the Best method at our socials or newsletter. Using 3 canvasses, 25 test cards and a 40-page whitepaper, this method gives you concrete tools to test your product, service, or concept, before marketing it. est Like the Best is the result of a cooperation of Brain Fuel and Innofest. To say that we’re proud, is an understatement.

Innofest’s DNA

“We often get the question: is it possible to work like Innofest ourselves? Keeping that in the back of our minds, we developed Test Like the Best: to help entrepreneurs set up their own test”, Linda Vermaat, director of Innofest, explains. Innofest provides practical test plots for innovations. For example, they set up living labs on a festival site or other creative hot spot, where a lot of people will come in touch with them easily. It’s a successful formula: Innofest has effectively marketed hundreds of innovations this way.

No wonder Test Like the Best is also called the Innofest method. he Innofest method provides aid, to set up your own test. A so-called mini living lab! This works like a charm, finds Friso, creative lead and founder of Brain Fuel. Countless businesspeople and organisations have followed Test Like the Best programs. A great example is the Light Challenge in, among other cities, Amsterdam; a large design sprint which challenges the new generation to come up with innovative concepts in terms of lighting.

However, the Light Challenge is just one of many examples.

From cocoa fruit to circular toilet

When you open the Case page of Innofest, you are welcomed by dozens of products, services and concepts that have come to life. Greening up your wardrobe, a lifesaving motor helmet, or an edible coffee cup. All boosted by testing at festivals like Oerol, Zwarte Cross and Into the Great Wide Open.

For Linda, the drink Kumasi stands out. “Chocolate is made of a fruit, which has a nut inside. The fruit is seen as waste material and is being thrown out. You can make Kumasi from this fruit, a soft drink. Farmers earn more money using the cocoa fruit this way, and they learn that what is seen as waste, can actually be of value.” Innofest helped twice setting up a test at Oerol, in which participants gave their feedback on the taste, packaging and marketing of Kumasi.

Another extraordinary innovation is the Semila Sanitation Hub, a completely circular toilet. t was designed since clean drinking water, food and sanitary facilities are still out of reach for billions of people. The Sanitation Hub has the potential to change that. Innofest helped them test filtering urine, sewage water, and eventually black water, and supported the process of public acceptance of the Hub. Festivals in The Netherlands also turned out to be interested in this sanitation sustainability: for example, Zwarte Cross now uses used shower water to flush toilets.

Trust to enter the market

The Innofest method has not only brought many inventions to life, but it also had a positive effect on Innofest as a brand. “Developing your own method gives you prestige, appeal”, Linda says. “It brings unity to our way of working and makes the trajectory visible for entrepreneurs. Besides that, it gives a deeper meaning to the conversations we have with our partners about our methodology. People shouldn’t think Innofest only opens up opportunities for festivals.”

Innofest’s bragging rights

• 1.068 used canvasses
• 200+ start-ups helped
• 25 living labs
• Innofest is expanding: 3 new cities/provinces in 2021
• 10-12 ‘alumni’ of Innofest are in supermarkets right now
• Innofest won the 2017 Grand Jury Prize during the European Enterprise Promotion Awards

Since then, Test Like the Best has become so much more than the love child of Brain Fuel and Innofest. Right now, people are learning to work with our method: there’s a Test Like the Best workshop, and soon it will be an (online) educational training. The method is starting to come alive in our entrepreneurial and innovative country. Slowly but steady, people are waking up and realising the importance of testing. If it would be up to us, everybody will be Testing Like the Best in the future.