Crack your business productivity puzzle: new funding available
Businesses can apply for a share of 拢3 million to work with the UK's best scientists and measurement facilities to improve their productivity.
Individual businesses can get funding to help them become more productive and competitive.
Innovate UK is making up to 拢3 million available to help make businesses more productive and solve the problems that are holding back their growth.
The fund will allow businesses to work with some of the country鈥檚 leading analysts and measurement experts to help improve their productivity and competitiveness.
Analysis for innovators
The funding is provided by Innovate UK, the , the , the and the (STFC).
It comes through the analysis for innovators programme, which aims to help individual companies solve tricky and sometimes long-running technical problems that can affect how well their products, processes or services function.
In 2017, 96% of UK businesses employed fewer than 10 staff. We know that many lack the skills for effective analysis and measurement. This programme aims to address that. By awarding access to expertise and the facilities of the laboratories and STFC, it allows businesses to optimise processes or improve their specifications to unlock new markets.
Grant holders from previous competition rounds have reported benefits including:
- increased productivity
- increased sales
- accelerated time to market
- development of exploitable intellectual property
Businesses must outline the problem they face
At this stage, we are looking for expressions of interests from businesses with a particular analysis or measurement problem.
If successful, businesses will be invited to meet with measurement experts and work with them to develop projects for grant funding in a second stage. These projects should have clear benefits in solving the problem and lead to improved productivity or competitiveness.
We will consider problems that:
- are related to the measurement or analysis of some quantities or properties of an existing process, product or service
- are not solvable by simple 鈥榦ff the shelf鈥� methods or techniques
A business can apply up to 3 times in this competition. Each application must focus on a different problem.
Competition information
- the competition opens on 22 August 2018, and the deadline for expressions of interest is at midday on 6 September 2018
- UK-based businesses of any size can apply
- stage 1 is looking to identify analysis problems within a business, with stage 2 offering grant funding. We expect most stage 2 projects to be under 拢50,000 and last up to 3 months, but we could fund projects of up to 拢200,000
- businesses could receive matched funding for their projects
- you can on 3 September 2018 to find out more about the competition and how to submit a quality application