The aim of this competition is to support UK-Swiss international business-led innovation collaboration. Through grant funding Innovate UK will support UK businesses to collaborate with Swiss counterparts for their mutual global growth prospects.

Your collaborative research and development (R&D) proposal must demonstrate:

• a clear game-changing or disruptive innovative idea leading to new products, processes or services
• a strong and deliverable business plan that addresses and documents market potential and needs
• sound, practical financial plans and timelines
• good value for money, which will always be a consideration in Innovate UK funding decisions
• a clear, evidence-based plan to deliver significant economic impact, return on investment (ROI) and growth through commercialisation, within 2 to 3 years of the funded project completion
• clear, considerable potential to significantly benefit the UK economy or national productivity
• the benefit of participants from the countries working together and how this adds value
• a clear definition of where intellectual property (IP) can be used and shared between the participants and countries
• a clear route to market within 2 to 3 years of project completion

Your full application consists of the completion of a joint call document to Innosuisse and a submission of the national applications at Innovate UK for UK partners and Innosuisse for Swiss partners.

If successful, your collaboration must submit the same common consortium agreement including an Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) agreement signed by all partners to Innovate UK and Innosuisse prior to start of the project. A failure to submit this document would make the application ineligible.

Research categories

We will fund UK partners for feasibility projects, industrial research projects and experimental development projects, as defined in the guidance on categories of research.

Projects we will not fund

We are not funding projects that:

• do not have a collaboration agreement with a Swiss registered business entity funded under the equivalent Innosuisse programme for their project
• do not include at least one research technology organisation registered in either the UK or Switzerland
• do not meet Innovate UK’s eligibility criteria

We cannot fund projects that are:

• dependent on export performance
• dependent on domestic inputs usage

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