Launchpad: Digital Technologies, North East England – R1 CR&D (UK)

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, is to invest up to £2 million in innovation projects.

The aim of this competition is to support outstanding innovation projects led by businesses. Your business must be active or growing work activities in the digital technologies cluster in North East England, consisting of Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, and County Durham.

The projects will contribute to North East England’s ambitions to build a more productive region, fostering a competitive and embedded business base and solving social and economic challenges.

Your project must focus on digital technologies that can be applied in growing and emerging markets. Growing or emerging markets, include but are not limited to:

• advanced manufacturing
• agriculture and forestry
• automotive and transportation
• creative industries
• culture, tourism, leisure and sport
• green industries
• health
• offshore industries
• retail and town centre

Specific Themes

Your project can focus on one or more of the following technologies:

• Immersive technologies
  • extended reality
  • digital twins
  • games engines
  • virtual production
• Artificial intelligence
  • data science
  • machine learning
  • neural networks
  • computer vision
  • robotics
  • large language models
  • quantum computing

Project Size

• Your project’s total grant funding request must be between £150,000 and £1 million.

Projects they will not fund

• They are not funding projects that:
  • do not contribute to innovation activity in the digital technologies innovation cluster in North East England
  • are within scope of the Cluster management strand of this Launchpad competition
  • request grant funding of less than £150,000 or more than £1 million
• They cannot fund projects that are:
  • dependent on export performance, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
  • dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

Who can apply?

• Your project
  • Your project must:
    • have a total grant funding request of between £150,000 and £1 million
    • last between 6 and 18 months
    • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
    • start at the earliest on 1 April 2024
    • end by 31 March 2026
• Lead organisation
  • To lead a project your organisation must:
    • be a UK registered business of any size
    • be or involve at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
    • collaborate with other UK registered organisations
    • be active or growing your work activities in the digital technologies innovation cluster in North East England
    • have a demonstrable ambition for business growth
• Project team
  • To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:
    • business of any size
    • academic institution
    • charity
    • not for profit
    • public sector organisation
    • research and technology organisation (RTO)
  • The contribution of project partners must add to the innovation led growth of the cluster.
  • Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once partners have accepted the invitation, they will be asked to login or to create an account in the Innovation Funding Service. They are responsible for entering their own project costs and completing their Project Impact questions in the application.
  • To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.
• Non-funded partners
  • Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.
• Subcontractors
  • Subcontractors are allowed in this competition. Their contribution must add to the innovation led growth of the cluster.
  • Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.
  • All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.

For more information, visit Innovate UK.