Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £2million in early-stage innovation projects that use people and planet centred design processes and expertise. This funding is from Innovate UK.
The aim of this competition is to help businesses develop new ideas that will deliver benefits for people and the planet, aligned with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. These can be for new or significantly improved products, services, places or business models.
The competition is for eligible organisations that want to test and improve the customer experience, social and environmental benefits of their early stage ideas, as well as generating new ideas.
Applications are encouraged from organisations that have not previously used people and planet centred design processes or expertise.
Eligibility
Your project must:
You must only include eligible project costs in your application.
Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian source.
You will be made ineligible if you exceed the Minimal Financial Assistance limit. You must submit a complete declaration as part of your application.
To lead a project or work alone your organisation must be a UK registered:
To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:
Your project team must include appropriate design expertise. Businesses without this capability are encouraged to collaborate with designers as project partners.
Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once accepted, partners will be asked to login or to create an account and enter their own project costs into the Innovation Funding Service.
To collaborate, the lead and at least one other organisation must claim funding by entering their costs during the application.
Your project can include UK registered partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.
Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.
The aim of this competition is to help businesses develop new ideas that will deliver benefits for people and the planet, aligned with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. These can be for new or significantly improved products, services, places or business models.
It will help businesses gain experience of working with design processes and expertise.
Your project must generate new ideas or test and improve the customer experience, social and environmental benefits of your existing, early-stage ideas.
Your project must use a people and planet centred design approach to consider and enhance the value of your ideas. You must consider how to make your ideas more desirable and easy to adopt, so that their benefits can be realised.
You can learn more about appropriate design approaches by searching online for terms including planet centred design, life centred design, humanity centred design and design for planet.
Your project can include activities or work packages to:
Your project can explore innovative ideas for physical or digital products, services, places or business models.
You are encouraged to respond to new discoveries made during the research and design process. This might include abandoning or rethinking your original ideas and changing the focus of planned R&D activity.
Portfolio approach
We want to fund a variety of projects across the Sustainable Development Goals detailed in specific themes. We call this a portfolio approach.
Specific themes
Your project must focus on one or more of the following UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which are:
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