Innovation

We are driving positive economic, societal, and environmental change through innovation.

Innovation is complex. The journey from idea to market is not straightforward and requires a diverse range of know-how, investment, market knowledge and research.

Innovate UK Business Connect exists to connect innovators with new partners and new opportunities beyond their existing thinking – accelerating ambitious ideas into real-world solutions. Our diverse connections and deep expertise enable us to be a trusted guide through a global landscape of research, development and innovation.

Connect with us to find out how we can become a part of your innovation journey and drive positive change.

Our current cross sector innovation programmes

Innovate UK Business Connect’s Innovation Canvas is designed to help you create value from innovation and identify the changes needed to make your idea succeed. It provides a framework for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of a specific project, identifying the most urgent challenges to overcome, and prioritising what action to take.

Innovate UK KTN’s Innovation Exchange is a cross-sector programme supporting innovation transfer by matching industry challenges to innovative companies from other sectors. It does this by putting large businesses with technical needs in contact with companies who have the right innovative solutions, for faster development of novel solutions.

Turning an idea into a scalable, commercial product is a challenge that faces many entrepreneurs, innovators and SMEs. Developing a new product, new functionality or new customer experience can be difficult and success may not always happen. 97% of hardware startups fail (compared with 70% of tech start-ups).

Related Opportunities

Innovate UK Smart grants: January 2024

Opens: 18/01/2024 Closes: 24/04/2024

UK registered organisations can apply for a share of up to £25m for game-changing R&D that can significantly impact the UK economy.

More Information

Knowledge transfer partnerships (KTP): 2024 to 2025 Round 1

Opens: 13/02/2024 Closes: 10/04/2024

UK registered academic institutions, RTOs or Catapults can apply for a share of up to £9 million to fund innovation projects with businesses or not for profits.

More Information

Feasibility studies for Artificial Intelligence solutions: Series 2

Opens: 27/03/2024 Closes: 08/05/2024

UK registered businesses can apply for a share of up to £5m to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to address business challenges and opportunities.

More Information

Related Events and Recordings

Wed
18
Oct
2023

Rail Innovation Exhibition 2023

09.00 - 17.00 | Birmingham

Watch now
Tue
24
Oct
2023

Fairness Innovation Challenge Competition Briefing

10.00 - 12.00 | Online

Watch now
See all events

Our Experts

Related News

Women in Innovation 2021/2022 Success Stories

03/05/2023

Women in Innovation 2021/2022 Success Stories

Read the success stories of our 2021/22 Women in Innovation and the personal journeys they’ve been on since winning their awards.

Read more
Innovate UK to launch report into future technologies with potential to power economic growth

12/06/2023

Innovate UK to launch report into future technologies with potential to power economic growth

Innovate UK is set to launch a new report exploring the technologies most likely to be important to the UK’s future economic prospects.

Read more
More News

Related programmes

Women in Innovation

Women in Innovation

Innovate UK’s Women in Innovation programme was launched in 2016 to address underrepresentation of women in business innovation and to encourage more of them to apply to Innovate UK’s funding opportunities.

Young Innovators

Young Innovators

The Young Innovators Awards are an annual competition from Innovate UK that finds, supports and celebrates young people with great business ideas.

Inclusive Innovation

Inclusive Innovation

Diversity in all its many forms matters, and great ideas can come from anyone.

For general enquiries regarding our Innovation sector contact us now

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