This programme supports higher education providers to commercialise their research. It promotes collaborations between universities and private sector partners, to achieve more effective research commercialisation.
The aim is to identify and develop high performance and best practice in commercialisation of university research and knowledge, including collaborative research and development (R&D) with business. Research England is interested in funding projects that build capability in all parts of England through collaborative activities between universities and external partners.
Research England’s Connecting Capability Fund (CCF) programme started in 2017 supporting collaborations between universities and external partners to drive forward good practice and achievement in commercialisation and industrial R&D collaboration.
Building on experience from 2017 to 2023 funded projects, the current CCF programme is managed through a series of project competitions, each targeted on a specific key or priority topic in commercialisation. The CCF programme is embedded within the overall management of Research England’s Development (RED) fund.
CCF-RED: university commercialisation ecosystems
This opportunity had a two-stage process which started with the submission of expressions of interest over the summer of 2024. Invited proposals were then asked to submit a full stage proposal by November 2024.
The funding opportunity aims to:
- support the strategic development of emerging and maturing place-based university-centred commercialisation ecosystems across England
- develop commercialisation best practice for higher education provider (HEP), focusing particularly on best practices collaboration between HEPs and with wider ecosystem partners
CCF-RED: shared technology transfer office (TTO) functions pilot
Projects were awarded in November 2024 and will be active for six months completing on 30 April 2025.
This opportunity will develop approaches that allow higher education providers to share TTO functions. This will allow universities with smaller portfolios to develop sustainable models and steps to implementation for shared TTO functions, specifically focused on more effective spinning-out of existing intellectual property pipelines.
The funding opportunity aims to:
- develop a wide range of models for sharing TTO functions to support universities with smaller portfolios
- identify what works and success factors that can be embedded across the sector in sustainable ways
CCF-RED: short-term preparatory funding
The first round of funding was awarded in June 2023.
This funding opportunity supports higher education providers to address capability gaps that are essential for successful commercialisation. It provides a strong platform for the radical and stretching models across key priority areas of commercialisation activity that we want to support through the CCF-RED fund.
Projects include demonstrators of approaches that could feature in subsequent bids. The portfolio of projects should help the CCF-RED programme to:
- move quickly and securely to support commercialisation
- inform future policy and public funding cases