Collaborate to Innovate

Collaborate to Innovate

Yorkshire Forward, the Regional Development Agency for Yorkshire and the Humber, has created a network of Centres of Industrial Collaboration (CICs). The expertise of these Centres focuses on the current and future needs of growing industries, and provides a business friendly environment to enable effective and profitable industry/university collaborations.

The CIC network comprises high calibre, commercially focused Centres of R&D. The Centres go through a rigorous selection process to ensure that they offer the highest standards of expertise and service as well as having a strong focus on business benefits through innovation. Each CIC had to demonstrate International research capability (RAE 4 or 5), a track record and willingness to engage business, access to state-of-the-art equipment, and facilities and the flexibility, low-cost structures and capability to solve industry problems.

Each CIC has a dedicated Commercial Manager, who has hands on experience of their industry sector. As the interface with business, they provide a single point of contact to a pool a dedicated CIC technical staff, and the wider academic expertise of the Universities and the entire CIC network.