New Innovators in digital technology, North East England

To lead a project your organisation must be a UK registered micro or small business. Usually, a small (or micro) business must meet at least 2 of these conditions:

• annual turnover must be not more than £10.2 million
• the balance sheet total must be not more than £5.1 million
• the average number of employees must be not more than 50

If your business has been funded directly by Innovate UK previously, you are not eligible to be offered funding through this competition.

If you have only received funding directly from Innovate UK Business Growth (previously named Innovate UK EDGE) or a Catapult scheme, you are eligible to apply for this competition.

Businesses with directors who have previously received a grant or Innovation Loan from Innovate UK as part of a different company, are eligible to apply but will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

A business with a previous award to a parent or subsidiary would also be eligible to apply, but the parent company must be classified as a micro or small business. Applications will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

If you are unsure, contact our customer support team by email at least 10 working days before the submission deadline.

An eligible UK business can submit one application only. Any subsequent applications submitted with the same project lead will be ineligible and will not be forwarded for assessment. This limit extends to current owners, directors and persons of significant interest, prohibiting them from leading multiple submissions through different entities.

Your project must:

• have a grant funding request between £25,000 and £50,000
• have total project costs that equal your grant funding request
• last between three and six months in duration
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
• help to grow your innovation activities during and after the project in the innovation cluster described in the Scope section
• start between 1 October 2024 and 1 January 2025
• end by 31 March 2025

The aim of this competition is to provide a package of targeted support to enable ambitious UK registered micro and small businesses to develop highly innovative ideas that have a clear route to commercialisation and business growth.

Your project must use the funding to help grow your innovation activities in the digital technology cluster in North East England, both during and after the project.

For this competition, North East England consists of Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, and County Durham.

Your project must focus on digital technologies that can be applied in growing and emerging markets.

Growing or emerging markets, include but are not limited to:

• advanced manufacturing
• agriculture and forestry
• automotive and transportation
• creative industries
• culture, tourism, leisure and sport
• green industries
• health
• offshore industries
• retail and town centre

Your innovation can lead to new products, processes or services that are significantly ahead of others currently available, or propose an innovative use of existing products, processes or services. It can also involve a new or innovative business model.

Your project can focus on one or more of the following:

Immersive technologies

• extended reality
• digital twins
• games engines
• virtual production

Artificial intelligence

• data science
• machine learning
• neural networks
• computer vision
• robotics
• large language models
• quantum computing

These lists are not exhaustive. Where you can show your proposal fits within the scope of this competition you can focus on other technologies.

A recorded online briefing will be available once the competition opens.

A Q&A session will be held on Tuesday 14 May at 10am: click here to register for a place.

Additional support is available from Innovate UK Business Connect’s Digital team.