Our 10 commitments to women innovators
Advancing women-led innovation: our pledge for progress
If women started and scaled businesses at the same rate as men, it could add up to £250 billion in new value to the UK economy.
Since its inception in 2016, the Innovate UK Women in Innovation Awards has invested £11 million in 200 women innovators, built a vibrant network of 10,500+ women business leaders, and helped grow the proportion of successful women-led applications from 1 in 7 to 1 in 3 across all Innovate UK programmes.
Despite this progress, challenges remain. In response to calls for greater support for women innovators, Innovate UK hosted four roundtables in late 2024, convening over 50 key stakeholders, including previous awardees, unsuccessful applicants and partner organisations from across the innovation ecosystem.
Led by Dr. Stella Peace, Exec Director Healthy Living and Agriculture, the roundtables were a forum to gather insights, to explore opportunities to refine our processes and programmes, and to strengthen collaboration with ecosystem partners to accelerate growth. Discussion topics were informed and prioritised with data-driven insights provided by the Let’s Fund More Women group.
In response to key points of feedback from the roundtables, we have developed 10 bold commitments. These commitments are designed to create more opportunities, foster inclusivity, and drive lasting impact for women-led businesses and the UK economy.
We will actively break down barriers for women innovators
As well as running Women in Innovation Awards, we will launch a new community forum and provide targeted support and communications to maximise the engagement of women innovators across all Innovate UK opportunities.
We will transform how we recruit and provide guidance to our assessors
We will set strong and ambitious targets on representation, and will improve assessor skills and expertise matching, embedding inclusive practices into every stage of the process.
We will hold ourselves to account
We are embedding clear inclusion goals into our future strategy, setting specific measures and being more transparent with our data on who applies and who succeeds; working with all partners to maximise the economic impact of women-led innovation.
These commitments will catalyse systemic change, by embedding representation and fairness into every facet of Innovate UK’s work, ultimately building a stronger, more inclusive innovation ecosystem.
Our 10 commitments to women innovators
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- The Innovate UK Women in Innovation Awards will return and will be refined according to feedback from the community. There will be a specific focus on the following areas:
- Make it easier to prepare an application and ensure the process adds value for applicants.
- Clear guidance on eligibility, scope, and priorities to help applicants make informed decisions.
- Enhancing applicant support through tailored resources.
- Signpost alternative funding and support to allow applicants to explore further opportunities beyond the award.
- Improving the assessment experience to ensure consistency, fairness and clarity in feedback.
- Recognition for high-scoring applicants, even if they do not receive the award.
- In Summer 2025, we will establish a Women in Innovation Community Forum to maintain ongoing engagement and knowledge-sharing beyond the roundtables. This forum will serve as a space for networking, collaboration, and discussion, ensuring that women innovators continue to shape our future initiatives.
- We will ensure that the full range of Innovate UK support and investment opportunities are more visible and accessible to women innovators. Opportunities will be promoted online, as well as existing targeted communications like the Women in Innovation newsletter and LinkedIn group.
- The Innovate UK Women in Innovation Awards will return and will be refined according to feedback from the community. There will be a specific focus on the following areas:
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- We will make bold commitments for inclusion and representation in our future strategy. These will feature specific, measurable goals for our entire organisation and we will report on our progress annually.
- To ensure transparency, we will release an updated applicant diversity data report in Autumn 2025, covering all Innovate UK competitions, providing additional insights into gender representation for applications and awards including investment value.
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- In Summer 2025, we will convene key stakeholders and partners to coordinate efforts and enhance support for women-led businesses, building on existing government-led initiatives, including the Invest in Women Taskforce and the Women and Equalities Committee Inquiry into Female Entrepreneurship.
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- We will develop standardised application questions, which will be rolled out across Innovate UK competitions from Summer 2025. This will provide consistency and improve clarity for applicants.
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- We will develop a new method of assessor classification ready for Summer 2025 to ensure that our assessment process is fit for the future. This will enhance how we match assessors to applications.
- We will actively recruit a diverse assessor pool and work towards a goal of 50% women assessors. We will open recruitment for new assessors in Summer 2025 and we will promote this through our communities of women innovators.
- We will continue to develop guidance for our assessors, including Equality Diversity and Inclusion. From Summer 2025, this will form a core part of the onboarding process for all new assessors.
Explore the commitments
Learn more about Innovate UK’s 10 commitments to women innovators, which will permeate our entire organisation, putting representation and fairness at the heart of everything we do.
Download full report
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