Deadline: 14 June 2017
Innovate UK is currently investing up to £1 million in early-stage, human-centred design projects to help businesses identify high-value innovation opportunities and generate ideas for new products, services or business models that align with customer demand.
This competition seeks to stimulate high-quality, human-centred design activities at the earliest stages of the innovation journey.
Programme Scopes
Design foundations projects could help businesses to:
- identify and address the problems that customers really care about
- generate ideas for new products, services or business models in line with customer demand
- explore and validate ideas quickly and with lower risk
- make better decisions based on a balanced consideration of human, technical and commercial factors
- get clarity and buy-in through better communication of their ideas
- innovate more effectively by boosting their design capability
Priority Areas
Project will be eligible for follow-on funding through one of Innovate UK’s open or regular, sector-based competitions in:
- health and life sciences
- manufacturing and materials
- infrastructure systems
- emerging and enabling technologies
Funding Information
- The total of upto £1 million has been allocated to fund early-stage design projects in this competition round.
- Projects must last no longer than 6 months. You must complete your project and incur and pay all costs by 31 March 2018.
- Projects should cost between £10,000 and £60,000 in total. The total project cost is the combination of the requested grant value and the applicant’s contribution.
Eligibility Criteria
To lead a project, one must:
- be a UK-based business of any size
- carry out project in the UK
- work alone or with sub-contractors (to be identified on your application form)
- make only one application in this competition round
- not be working on more than one project funded with a design foundations grant at the same time
- not have been refused funding by Innovate UK for the same project on more than one previous occasion (whether in another design foundations round or a different competition)
How to Apply
Interested applicants must register online via given website.
Eligible Country: UK
For more information, please visit Innovate UK.