Getting our fair share of Innovation funding

By Brigette Currin 2 minute read

The UK vote to leave the EU has left many entrepreneurs concerned about long-term access to talent and funding. The sad fact is that historically, the East of England’s digital tech companies have not received their share of the innovation funding – even from the UK Government.

Earlier this year, TechEast commissioned a study on Innovation in the ICT Sector, which took an independent view of how Norfolk and Suffolk’s ICT companies performed at accessing public funding to support their growth. The report found that in 2014, only 0.3% of the available grant funding in the UK was received by businesses in the New Anglia region (£2m out of £700m). It has been under 1% for the past five years.

Of course the Government doesn’t give grants away – there are hurdles to overcome – and as you would expect there is a £match requirement to be made from the company itself. But if you are thinking of growth for the future or how your current product or service will need to change, then it’s worth considering innovation funding from the government.

This opportunity came into my email the other day; the NHS is providing up to £1m for Innovative ideas which help children with long-term health conditions be more independent. If you are a company that has a novel solution for improving self-care or allows for remote monitoring of a patient, then this could be interesting to you.

Innovate UK has also launched an open funding competition, investing up to £15 million in innovative R&D projects.

If you are interested in growth and have questions of how it might happen in your business then please take a few moments to look at this Tech East report. If you’d like to find out more, please contact me or any member of the Tech East Board.

Ian Buxton
Project Director
Tech East
Ian.buxton@techeast.com

Stop press

As I published this another funding competition popped in that I am sure will interest a number of our companies in the region.

The aim of this competition is to encourage the development of business-led innovative solutions that will help provide:

  • affordable, sustainable and secure energy
  • connected transport
  • urban living
  • integrated infrastructure and resilience of infrastructure to environmental and social pressures