Business Innovation Fund – United Kingdom

The Business Innovation Fund supports SMEs to progress experimental development R&D, which means acquiring, combining, shaping and using existing scientific, technological, business and other relevant knowledge and skills with the aim of creating novel/new products, processes or services. It does not mean routine or periodic changes made to existing products, processes or services.

Eligible spend in pursuit of experimental R&D must be against: gross employment costs, materials costs, capital usage costs, sub contract costs, travel and subsistence and other direct project costs.

Funding Available 

• You can apply for a grant of between £15,000 and £25,000 to cover up to 45% of your project costs. You must fund the remaining 55% of your project costs.

Which sectors are eligible to apply? 

• The Business Innovation Fund is able to fund SMEs from any sector, although those from the following, aligning with the regional innovation cluster strengths and technology strengths, as described in the Plan for Innovation 2024-2029, are particularly encouraged to apply:
  • Cluster Strengths 
    • Immersive Creative
    • Advance Engineering
    • Health Sciences
    • Sustainable Fintech
  • Technology Strengths
    • Artificial Intelligence (AI), Digital, and Future Communications
    • Quantum
    • Robotics and Smart Machines
    • Advanced Materials and Manufacturing
    • Energy and Environmental Technologies

Criteria

• The Business Innovation Fund can support Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) undertaking R&D activities. This means that your business needs to:
  • be an economic enterprise that sells goods or services for profit; meet the definitions, in terms of staff headcount, turnover and balance sheet, as follows:
    • number of employees – no more than 250
    • turnover – no more than £36 million
    • balance sheet total – no more than £18 million
• If your business is in a partnership or is a linked enterprise (i.e. you have a controlling interest over another enterprise(s) or another enterprise(s) has a controlling interest over you) you must use combined numbers of employees, turnover and balance sheet of all those companies to determine if you are an SME.
• The Business Innovation Fund is not able to support large businesses.

For more information, visit West of England Combined Authority.