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Innovation Collaborations

Finance to assist collaboration to develop and exploit new ideas

Purpose

To stimulate productivity and economic competitiveness through increased UK innovation within businesses.

How will this be achieved?

By incentivising and facilitating increased knowledge exchange and encouraging technological diffusion between businesses and knowledge base institutions (see Note 1) through increased collaborations.

Why offer public sector support?

The UK lags behind its major competitors in capitalising on scientific discovery and technological advancements by turning them into successful commercial products and services. Through its support to knowledge institutions Government has a responsibility and role to play in supporting research and development in technologies that are at a very early stage of development, or which mainly benefit society as a whole.

In addition, businesses can under-invest in certain types of research and development due to concerns about spillovers and being able to capture the wider benefits. There are potential external benefits from collaborative research and development. However, many businesses often lack effective mechanisms to develop collaborative working relationships with other businesses and knowledge institutions which leads to the under–development of new ideas.

What will be offered?

Networking for Innovation

• Funding for business-facing networks to encourage businesses to build relationships with other businesses, intermediaries and universities to improve knowledge exchange and innovation. Interventions will be proportionate and time limited through well defined exit strategies.

Partnerships for Innovation

• Placement and funding of an under-graduate or graduate from a knowledge base institution in a business to share skills and expertise of value to the business via a strategic project.
• Exchange of staff between businesses and knowledge base institutions.

Collaborative research and development

• Collaborative research and development activities where a business works with another business and/ or with knowledge base institutions, to develop key technologies for future needs or for radically new products involving the embedding of key technologies.
• Large scale demonstrator projects that promote the potential of key technologies to a regional or national business audience.

Who will be eligible?

• SMEs, larger companies and knowledge base institutions engaging in placement and exchange secondments (see above), collaborative research and development activities or collaborative demonstration projects;
• Intermediaries to reduce set up and administration costs of networks which allow businesses to pursue innovation collaboration projects that have the most benefit to the economy.

Note 1. Includes UK Public Sector Research Establishments (PRSE) or equivalents, Research and Development Organisations (RDO), Research and Technology Organisations (RTOs), Higher Education and Further Education Institutions.