Innovate UK: Investing in Innovation Projects addressing Challenges in Emerging and Enabling Technologies!

Deadline: 28 March 2018

UK businesses can apply for a share of up to £19 million to develop innovations in emerging and enabling technologies or health and life sciences. A further £12 million is available for KTPs.

Innovate UK will invest up to £19 million in innovation projects that inspire new products, processes and services. These should address challenges in emerging and enabling technologies.

The aim of this competition is to help UK businesses broaden their innovation activities, disrupt existing markets and find new revenue sources.

Priority Areas

Projects must show significant innovation in one of 4 priority areas:

Emerging technologies (biofilms, energy harvesting, graphene, new imaging technologies).
Digital.
Enabling capabilities, including electronics, sensors and photonics (ESP), robotics and autonomous systems (RAS), creative economy and design.
Space applications.

Funding Information

Applicant’s project’s total costs should be between £35,000 and £2 million.
Projects should last between 3 months and 3 years.

Eligibility Criteria

To be eligible for funding applicants must:
- be a UK based business, academic, charity, public sector organisation or research and technology organisation (RTO)
- carry out their project work in the UK
- intend to exploit the results from the UK
The lead organisation must claim funding through this competition. If the project is collaborative, at least one other organisation in the consortium must also claim funding.
All projects must involve an SME. Only an SME can lead projects with costs up to and including £100,000.
Any one business or RTO may lead on one application and partner in a further 2 applications. If a business is not leading an application, they can be a partner in up to 3 applications. An RTO can only lead a project if no business in the consortium has the capacity to lead the project.
If an RTO is:
- the lead on an application they must have 2 business collaborators (one SME, and one other business of any size)
- not the lead on any application, they can be a partner in any number of applications
Academics cannot lead on an application but can be a collaborator in any number of applications.