|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
What Opportunities Does Innovate UK Provide for UK Businesses?
Innovate UK is the UK’s innovation agency and part of the Government’s UK Research and Innovation department. It provides funding and support for the development and commercialisation of new products and services for businesses in the most cutting edge industries.
Their current priority areas for grant funding opportunities include:
i) Supporting the UK reaching a net zero carbon economy by 2050 by making improvements in energy efficiency and carbon reduction activities.
ii) Supporting the UK in terms of reaching health and wellbeing goals, such as tackling ill health and promoting improvements in diet and food.
iii) Helping UK businesses develop and deploy the latest technology as part of their processes, including in the following priority areas:
- Advanced Materials and Manufacturing
- Artificial Intelligence
- Digital and Advanced Computing
- Bioinformatics and Genomics
- Engineering Biology
- Electronics, Photonics and Quantum
- Energy and Environment Technologies
- Robotics and Smart Machines
What Can You Get Funding For?
Businesses may seek Innovate UK grants or loans to pay towards a range of different business innovation activities, which are briefly outlined below.
- Experimental Development – Funding to acquire, combine, shape or use existing scientific and technical knowledge to develop new or create improved products, processes and services.
- Project Feasibility and Evaluation – Funding to Evaluate and analyse a project’s potential to determine if research or product and service development is viable to continue on a wider basis.
- Industrial Research – Funding for planned research and critical investigation to gain new knowledge and skills for the purpose of product development or service or process improvement.
- Technical Evaluation – Funding to carry out tests to determine and investigate technical suitability of materials, equipment, system or processes.
- Technical Feasibility – Funding to carry out in-depth studies to assess the details of how you intend to deliver a product or service to customers.
What Are Some Of The Regular Innovate UK Programmes Available?
Below is a list of schemes that Innovate UK runs across multiple rounds or across a common theme set.
i) Innovate UK Launchpad Programme
This programme is aimed at supporting clusters of innovative SMEs across 12 different locations in the UK, each specialising in a specific industry focus. A total of £80m worth of funding has been made available between 2022 and 2024 and over 100 new projects have been supported so far.
The following Launchpad clusters exist
1) Manufacturing Launchpad in Liverpool City Region
2) Net Zero Launchpad in Tees Valley
3) Net Zero Industry in South West Wales
4) Digital Technologies in North East England
5) Health Technologies in West Yorkshire
6) Bio-based Manufacturing in Scotland
7) Health and Life Sciences in Northern Ireland
8) Immersive and Creative Industries for Coventry and Warwickshire
9) Agri-tech and Food Technology in Eastern England
10) Marine and Maritime in the Great South West
11) Agri-tech and Food Technology in Mid and North Wales
ii) Innovate UK Smart Grants
This series of grants provides quarterly funding opportunities to help bring original and high impact innovations into the marketplace. Businesses looking to receive funding from the Smart Grants can be from any industry and be of any business size, but must have a clear goal on how they can successfully commercialise their idea. The idea must also be completely new and ahead of anything else that already exists on the market.
iii) Eureka Eurostars
Innovate UK is responsible for assisting UK business applicants in applying for collaborative research and development funding opportunities from the EU alongside European businesses and research organisations for a number of different themes and topics. UK businesses are eligible to apply for EU funding as part of post-Brexit financial agreements. The funding aims to see international collaboration ons projects with high chances of commercialisation success for innovative products, technology-based applications and technology-based services.
iv) Innovation Loans
UK SMEs and micro-businesses are invited to apply for loans from Innovate UK worth between £100,000 and £2 million for innovative projects that have a strong commercial potential and have a chance to significantly improve the UK economy. Funding is for long term projects that can last for up to 5 years and covers both the research and development stage and commercialisation stage of an innovation. There are multiple funding rounds available for this scheme every year.
v) Investor Partnerships
SMEs are eligible to apply for Innovate UK grant funding alongside private investment from selected investor partners for innovative projects. Businesses with highly promising innovative ideas are invited to establish a relationship with one of Innovate UK’s investor partners and gain some level of investment traction before attempting to apply for Innovate UK grants funding of this type. There are multiple funding rounds available for this scheme every year.
What Are Some Examples Of Specific Targeted Innovate UK Schemes?
As well as the regular funding sets listed above, Innovate UK regularly runs specific one-off programmes aimed at specific innovation challenges, here are some examples of schemes currently open;
i) ARIA: Smarter Robot Bodies
ARIA or UK Advanced Research and Innovation Agency is a Government backed initiative that is part of the Innovate UK and UK Research and Innovation set. This scheme is inviting high-potential proposals that can receive up to £500k each relating to advanced concepts for the development of smarter robot bodies. Due to the highly specialised nature of the field, ARIA is looking to support early stage curiosity-driven research and pre-commercial science and technology for robotics that need further assistance in pushing ideas to realisation.
ii) Smart Manufacturing Data Hub Rapid Demonstrator Projects
The Smart Manufacturing Data Hub is a Government backed agency whose funding opportunities are managed by Innovate UK. The goal of the hub is to support development and use of new industrial digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality in UK manufacturing and factory processes. Calls for Rapid Demonstrator project applications are currently active where grants worth up to £50,000 are available for businesses wanting to develop transformational and disruptive solutions, processes, or services for manufacturing using the data generated from their factories.
iii) BridgeAI Supply Chain Demonstrator
Innovate UK’s BridgeAI programme aims to support businesses in high growth potential sectors, including agriculture and food, construction, creative and transport and logistics to increase the use of AI to increase productivity and efficiency. The BridgeAI Supply Chain Demonstrator provides up to £2m in grant funding for projects that can show how AI solutions can be adopted in supply chains to increase efficiency and business decision making.
iv) Europe Quantum Technology CR&D 2024
Innovate UK is running a scheme that invites UK businesses to carry out collaborative research and development (CR&D) activity with EU member state organisations in the field of quantum technology. Up to £600,000 in grant funding is available for UK grant partners on a project. The aim of the project is to support international collaboration in order to help accelerate innovation in quantum technology and remove technological and market barriers to success for commercialisation and adoption in the UK and internationally.
v) Station Innovation Zone: Year Three
The Connected Places Catapult in collaboration with National Rail is running a scheme funded by Innovate UK that is encouraging SMEs to apply for funding to come up with innovative solutions to improve passenger experience at train stations. There are 2 phases to the competition where SMEs can be awarded up to £4,000 to develop trial plans and then a further £45,000 for the most promising projects to be implemented longer term at train stations.
How To Apply For Innovate UK Schemes
Full details about how to apply for Innovate UK schemes and the eligibility criteria is available on each individual scheme page. In order to apply, businesses need to register an account with the Innovation Funding Service and make an application online.
Different schemes have different application requirements, for some schemes businesses are able to make a single application on their own and just need to follow the online application process.
There are some schemes that require businesses to apply as part of a consortium, which can include other private enterprises from the UK and sometimes the EU, but can also include research organisations, academics and other third-party bodies. Businesses need to look for partner organisations before making an application, either as the lead applicant or as a supporting business.
Want To Find The Latest Innovate UK Grant Opportunities?
If you want to see the full set of Innovate UK grants currently available, please visit https://getbusinessgrants.com/
