Funding competition Analysis for innovators round 5: phase 1 expression of interest (de minimis)
UK businesses can apply for a share of up to £1 million to address measurement and analysis problems with one or more analysis partner organisations.
- Competition opens: Monday 29 July 2019
- Competition closes: Wednesday 4 September 2019 12:00pm
This competition is now closed.
Competition sections
Description
UK Businesses will work with Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, to invest up to £1 million in innovation projects.
The aim of this competition is to match the best UK experts and cutting-edge facilities with companies that have analysis or measurement problems. Your application must describe the problem and estimate the value to your company of solving it.
Successful applicants at this expression of interest (EoI) phase will be invited to brokerage sessions with relevant analysis for innovators (A4I) partners, arranged by the Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN). These will focus on approaches to solve the applicant’s problem.
This is phase 1 of a 2-phase competition with de minimis state aid funding.
Phase 1 is an expression of interest.
Phase 2 is dependent on the success of phase 1. Successful applicants in phase 1 are invited to work with A4I funding partners to suggest joint projects to develop solutions for phase 2.
There is a similar A4I competition running under article 25 of state aid which awards eligible project costs between £25,000 and £300,000 for longer projects between 3 and 12 months.
The competition closes at midday 12pm UK time on the deadline stated.
Funding type
Grant
Project size
Your project’s total eligible costs must be between £25,000 and £50,000.
Who can apply
De minimis
In this competition funding will be made to the partners as a de minimis grant. At the second full application stage, the applicant must complete the de minimis declaration.
Your project
Your project’s total eligible costs must be between £25,000 and £50,000.
Projects must end by 31 March 2021. They can last up to 3 months.
Lead organisation
To lead a project your organisation must:
- be a UK based business of any size
- be prepared to work with and discuss your problem with one or more Analysis for Innovators (A4I) funding and brokerage partners
- carry out its project work in the UK
Multiple applications
Any one business can apply into the first stage with up to 2 applications.
Previous applications
Resubmissions
You can use a resubmission to apply for this competition. A resubmission is a proposal Innovate UK judges as not materially different from one you've submitted before. It can be updated based on the assessors' feedback.
If you submit a new proposal this time you will be able to use it in no more than one future competition that allows resubmissions.
Failure to exploit
If you applied to a previous competition as the lead or sole organisation and were awarded funding by Innovate UK or UK Research and Innovation, but did not make a substantial effort to exploit that award, we will award no more funding to you, in this or any other competition. You will not be able to contest our decision. We will:
- assess your efforts in the previous competition against your exploitation plan for that project
- review the monitoring officers’ reports and any other relevant sources for evidence
- document our decision, which will be made by 3 team members, and communicate it to you in writing
Previous projects
Under the terms of Innovate UK funding, you are required to submit an independent accountant’s report (IAR) with your final claim. If you or any organisation in your consortium failed to submit an IAR on a previous project, we will not award funding to you in this or any other competition until we have received the documents.Funding
We have allocated up to £1 million to fund innovation projects in this competition.
For feasibility studies and industrial research projects, you could get 100% funding for your eligible project costs.
This competition provides funding under de minimis aid regulation rules. It is your responsibility to make sure that your organisation is eligible to receive de minimis funding.Your proposal
Up to £1 million in collaborative innovation projects will be invested by:
- Innovate UK, as part of UK Research and Innovation
- the National Physical Laboratory (NPL)
- the National Measurement Laboratory at LGC
- the National Engineering Laboratory (NEL) and
- the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
The aim of this competition is to help businesses address analysis and measurement problems affecting an existing product, process or service. For example, to analyse why a certain percentage defect rate is occurring within an existing production process. These are problems that are best explored by experts and cutting-edge facilities available in the UK.
You must outline what you consider to be the benefits of solving your problem, such as improved productivity or competitiveness.
We will only consider problems that:
- are related to the measurement or analysis of some quantities or properties of an existing process, product or service
- are not effectively solvable by simple ‘off the shelf’ methods or techniques
This is phase 1 of a potential 2-phase competition. A decision to proceed with phase 2 will depend on the outcomes from phase 1. Only successful applicants from phase 1 will be able to apply to take part in phase 2.
In addition to Innovate UK’s standard assessment, experts from the A4I partner and brokerage organisations will assess whether they have a potential approach to solving your problem.
We are looking to fund a portfolio of projects, across a variety of technologies, markets, technological maturities and research categories.Research categories
Projects we will not fund
In this competition we will not consider problems that:
- are not measurement or analysis problems
- we consider to be resolvable with easily available methods, such as those that do not require any innovative or cutting-edge science or facilities
- are not related to a company’s existing processes, products or services
- relate to the development of a new product, software application or service
- 19 July 2019
- Teddington roadshow
- 22 July 2019
- Glasgow roadshow
- 23 July 2019
- Oxfordshire roadshow
- 24 July 2019
- Cheshire roadshow
- 29 July 2019
- Competition opens
- 31 July 2019
- London briefing event
- 31 July 2019
- Online briefing event
- 4 September 2019 12:00pm
- Competition closes
- 19 September 2019
- Applicants notified
Before you start
You must read the general guidance for applicants before you start.
De minimis
In the full competition stage after the brokerage session, you must provide evidence you are eligible for de minimis aid. Each partner must complete the de minimis declaration we will email to you, declaring any de minimis public funding or benefit you have received in the past 3 years.
Email the completed form to competitionenquiries@innovateuk.ukri.org with the subject line: De minimis declaration.
It is your responsibility to ensure your declaration is accurate and complete.
Brokerage session
If your application is successful at this first phase you will be invited to attend sessions with one or more A4I partner organisations. The invitations will be sent by the Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN).
KTN will arrange the initial confidential brokerage sessions between successful applicants and scientists from relevant A4I brokerage partner organisations. Follow-on sessions will include working on any joint project proposals to submit to phase 2 of this competition.What we will ask you
The application is split into 2 sections:
- Project details.
- Application questions.
1. Project details
Explain what your company does and how the problem you will outline is important to the company. This section is not scored, but we will use it to decide whether your problem fits with the scope of the competition. If it does not, it will be immediately rejected.
Application details
The lead applicant must complete this section. Give your application a title which refers to the problem being addressed. Is the application a resubmission?
Research category
Select the type of research you will undertake.
Company summary
Describe your company briefly, and be clear about why the problem is of importance. You should include any context about the process, product or service that the problem relates to.
Your answer can be up to 400 words long.
Public description
Describe your project in detail, and in a way that you are happy to see published. Please do not include any commercially sensitive information. If we award your project funding, we will publish this description. This could happen before you start your project.
Your answer can be up to 400 words long.
Scope
Describe how your problem fits the scope of the competition. If your problem is not in scope it will be immediately rejected and will not be sent for assessment. We will give you feedback on why.
Your answer can be up to 400 words long.
2. Application questions
Your answers to these questions will be evaluated by experts to determine if they can offer any approaches to solving your problem.
Your answer to questions 1 to 3 can be up to 400 words long. Your answer to question 4 can be up to 50 words long. Do not include any URLs in your answers except for the link to your video.
Question 1. Problem
What is the measurement or analysis problem that you need to solve?
Summarise:
- what the core of the problem is
- what your major challenges are in understanding this problem
- any important aspects of the problem that you were unable to show in the video submission
Question 2. Previous attempts to solve the problem
What methods or techniques have you previously tried to solve the problem?
Describe or explain:
- what you did to understand or address the problem
- what success or otherwise you had when trying to address the problem
Question 3. Value to your business of solving the problem
What difference will it make to your business if you can solve this problem?
Describe or explain:
- what you estimate the value of the benefit to be (in £) if this problem is solved
- how you arrived at this estimate
- what components contribute to this benefit estimate in terms of productivity and competitiveness gains, such as savings in waste, higher quality products or services, or increased sales or market share
We want to balance helping the most businesses with making the most impact with the money available. Assessors are looking for realistic values here, not necessarily the biggest numbers.
Question 4. Link and password to access your video
Please carefully paste in the URL of the Vimeo video you have made to describe or show your problem. Carefully type the password required to access the video (specifying case-sensitive characters accurately). Applications without a video are ineligible for this competition.
Background and further information
Analysis for Innovators (A4I) is a very different type of programme from Innovate UK’s usual grant funding competitions. It is focused on helping individual companies solve tricky and perhaps long running technical problems affecting existing processes, products or services.
The programme’s aim is to help boost a company’s productivity or competitiveness. It achieves this by bringing the UK’s top scientists and facilities, often otherwise inaccessible, together with companies to address problems in innovative ways.
The A4I programme has run successfully 4 times before in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. This fifth round of the programme builds upon that experience. It focuses on scaling up both:
- the number of successful relationships brokered between UK companies and the UK’s centres of expertise in measurement and analysis
- the grant-funding of follow-on projects addressing the problems raised
If you want help with this specific competition, email nigel.rix@ktn-uk.org at the Knowledge Transfer Network in the first instance.
If you need more information on scope or your application, contact the competition helpline on 0300 321 4357 or email us at support@innovateuk.ukri.org.
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