Money for innovation

£63million will be available to UK businesses this autumn to help drive forward innovation and create prosperity for the UK economy though the latest round of the UK Government's £370 million Technology Programme.

Businesses are being urged to exploit emerging technologies, taking ideas out of the lab, into the market place and onto the balance sheet, to ensure UK competitiveness in the growing global economy.

The £63million will be for collaborative research and development projects in six priority areas identified as key in progressing the UK's science and innovation base and moving the UK towards its target of helping increase R&D intensity in the UK (as a percentage of GDP) to reach 2.5% by around 2014.

The competition for collaborative research and development projects will formally open on 24 November with a launch event in London. Supporting this will be a series of regional information days being held across the UK and run with the support of the regional development agencies and devolved administrations.

The events will be an opportunity for delegates to learn more about the technologies and hear about the range of support from the Programme, regions and networks. Speakers will also help them understand the competition requirements and the application process.

The current round is part of the bi-annual competition underpinned by the Government's three-year investment to stimulate collaborative research and development and champion the UK's position as a centre for excellence for scientific innovation. Support for the competition is also being provided by the Research Councils.

The Autumn 2005 technology priority areas are regenerative medicine technologies (£10m), energy (£13m), design of electrical and electronic control and power stations (£10m), materials modelling (£10m), technologies for data and content storage, management, retrieval and analysis (£10m) and waste minimisation/resource efficiency (£10m).

Each regional information day will specifically focus on one of the six autumn priority areas and will include case studies and presentations from former competition winners. The information days will be held in:

• Edinburgh, 28th November with Scottish Executive - focus on energy
• York, 30th November with Yorkshire Forward - focus on waste minimisation/resource efficiency
• Manchester, 1st December with NWDA - focus on data and content storage, management, retrieval and analysis
• London, 5th December with EMDA - focus on design of electrical and electronic control power systems
• London, 8th December with Invest NI - focus on materials modelling
• London, 9th December with SEEDA & LDA - focus on regenerative medicine

Further information about the Technology Programme, details of the Autumn 2005 competition, information days and how to apply can be accessed through http://www.dti.gov.uk/technologyprogramme

More information on each of the technologies can be found at http://www.dti.gov.uk/technologyprogramme/nov05_html