Innovate UK Contracts for Innovation 

Innovate UK has recently rebranded its highly successful Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) to Innovate UK Contracts for Innovation as part of a drive to include even more businesses of all sizes to participate and apply for funding. 

What are Innovate UK Contracts for Innovation?

Public sector organisations who are looking to address a specific challenge that requires input involving research and development activities are able to run a competitive funding opportunity to help develop a new product or service. Organisations are able to make a bid for funding in the competition if they believe that their expertise matches what is required to develop what has been requested in the challenge. The end goal is that successful challenge bidders develop a viable solution for the public sector organisation to be used or developed further along the innovation pipeline. 

What applicants are eligible?

Innovate UK Contracts for Innovation funding opportunities are open to businesses of any size, academic and research organisations, not-for-profits and charities. There is also no minimum or maximum defined size of contract award. 

Contract recipients can be based anywhere in the UK and EU and European Economic Area based organisations are also eligible to apply as part of current public sector procurement regulations. This inclusion of EU organisations also means that UK organisations can reciprocally benefit from applying for European research funding opportunities, such as the Horizon Europe programme.

How does the Innovate UK Contract for Innovation process work?

• Early stage feasibility studies
• Prototype development
• Late stage demonstrator projects

Each phase of development allows a public sector organisation to select multiple suppliers to work on a project in order to fully exploit multiple ideas and concepts from different innovative organisations. They can then decide to proceed with the most promising ideas as they further go down the innovation phases. So the best feasibility study outcomes will be shortlisted to move onto prototype development and so on. It may also be the case that new organisations with different skill-sets might end up being encouraged to apply once they have a refined picture of what they want after seeing the results of the feasibility study or the prototype. A smaller company might be able to produce a prototype, but then a larger organisation with specific high-tech equipment might need to be called in to produce a closer to completion demonstrator project. Ultimately, any successful bidder is paid well for their work at whatever stage they choose to get involved at. There is a requirement that a minimum of 2 suppliers are selected at each phase to be funded and they each receive at least 50% funding on R&D activity. In many cases the public sector organisation will actually cover the full 100% funding of development costs.

What are the benefits of applying for Innovate UK Contract for Innovation?

Successful applicants are provided with an opportunity to work with public sector organisations that want to act as early adopters of cutting-edge innovation. The public sector organisation who issues a challenge gets free usage rights to any intellectual property (IP) developed during a funded project, but the research and development organisation gets to retain the IP rights to be exploited commercially in other projects. This retention of intellectual property means a route to market for new ideas and technology as well turning the commercialisation of these ideas to be used to help aid long term business growth and success.

How to apply for Innovate UK Contract for Innovation opportunities

You can access the latest funding opportunities by accessing them on the Innovate UK site where there will be details of the competitions, who can apply and an online application form. Those interested in future opportunities are also encouraged to contact Innovate UK via email and speak to an advisor about what research and development activities your organisation can get involved with and then receive updates on new competitions when they arise.

What type of Public Sector Organisations have been involved in competitions?

So far, over 100 different public sector organisations have been involved in investing over £1.5bn in funding to research and development organisations via this competitive process. 

Some of these public sector funders looking for challenge solutions have included:

• Department of Energy, Security and Net Zero
• Department of Health and Social Care
• Department for Transport
• Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
• Devolved Administrations
• NHS
• Defence and Security Accelerator
• UK Space Agency
• UK Atomic Energy Authority
• Network Rail

What are some examples of recent Innovate UK Contracts for Innovation challenges?

• The UK Space agency launched a new Unlocking Space for Business Programme that supports businesses through the use of innovative satellite data and services.

• A new alliance known as the Concrete Commitment Cohort (CCC) of major concrete users was put together by Innovate UK for a competition challenge that invited innovators to find novel solutions to decarbonising concrete.

• The NHS runs multiple open calls as part of the NHS Cancer Programme as part of ways to help detect and diagnose cancer early across UK hospitals and clinical care facilities using innovative solutions.

• DEFRA and the Biotechnology Biological Science Research Council ran a competition to boost development of innovative solutions to enhance plant health and biosecurity activities, focusing on dealing with issues, detection and treatment related to regulated pests and plant diseases. 

Find out more about Innovate UK Contracts for Innovation Schemes

To find out a full list of the current open and upcoming Innovate UK Contracts for Innovation schemes available for UK businesses to apply for, visit https://getbusinessgrants.com/ for details.