Innovate UK Contracts for Innovation (formerly known as the Small Business Research Initiative or SBRI) helps public sector organisations to solve complex challenges by running a competitive funding opportunity, to develop and adopt new solutions and technologies.
With the support of Innovate UK, public sector organisations looking to address a specific challenge that requires new research and development can use Contracts for Innovation to run a competitive funding opportunity.
Through Contracts for Innovation, successful organisations are awarded a contract to develop a new product or service with input from end users, which is then available for use by the challenge owner.
How it works
The Contracts for Innovation funding mechanism is highly flexible. It allows public sector organisations, as the challenge owner, the ability to shape competitions to fully meet their needs.
Through Contracts for Innovation competitions, public sector organisations can support:
- early-stage feasibility studies
- prototype development
- late-stage demonstrator projects
Competitions are open to all types and sizes of organisation, including businesses of any size, academic and research organisations and not-for-profits and charities. There is no minimum or maximum size of contract award.
Potential contract recipients can be from anywhere in the UK, EU or the European Economic Area to align with current public sector procurement regulations.
Contracts for Innovation can be run in as many phases as required. This enables challenge owners to down select the most promising solutions at each phase for further research and development (R&D) investment where desired. Each phase must involve at least two funded suppliers and fund at least 50% R&D activity.
IP rights after the project
To facilitate adoption of the solutions developed through Contracts for Innovation, the challenge owner retains free usage rights to foreground intellectual property (IP) developed during the funded project. This ensures that no matter the size of award Contracts for Innovation funding is never considered a subsidy under the Subsidy Control Act 2022.
For successful organisations, Contracts for Innovation provide:
- a route to market for new ideas and technologies
- a chance to work with the public sector as an early adopter of cutting-edge innovation
- a way to create and retain intellectual property with the aim of commercialising solutions, helping to achieve business growth and success
Support from Innovate UK
We offer a range of support options including:
- capacity-building within public sector organisations
- enabling public sector organisations to run their own competitions
- fully managing competitions
- supporting promotion of the funding opportunity to applicants
The level of support can be tailored to the challenge owner.