Progress on our commitments to women innovators

We said

We committed to bringing back the Women in Innovation Awards with improvements shaped by feedback from the community. Our focus was on making the application process more accessible, supportive, and impactful for women innovators.

Our progress to date

We are actively designing the next round of Women in Innovation Awards. To address feedback from the Women in Innovation community and deliver on our commitments, we are making the following key improvements:

• Additional recognition and support for highly commended applicants
• Clearer, more tightly defined scope
• Implementing a suitability checker tool, which enables potential applicants to quickly confirm their eligibility.
• Signposting other opportunities for women innovators
• Piloting new application questions
• A greater proportion of women assessors

For transparency, a full list of changes will be shared when the competition is announced.

We said

We committed to establishing a Women in Innovation Community Forum to maintain ongoing engagement and knowledge-sharing beyond the roundtables, ensuring that women innovators continue to shape our future initiatives.

Our progress to date

Launched on the 25 June 2025, the Community Forum comprises 16 members, drawn from diverse regions, sectors and backgrounds, representing a wide spectrum of business communities.

Over a 12-month term, these members will contribute to four meetings to bring fresh ideas and real-world perspectives to our evolving innovation strategy and programmes. The second forum meeting was held on the 23 Sept 2025.

Learn more about the Women in Innovation Community forum, its goals and its members.

We said

We committed to ensuring the full range of Innovate UK support and investment opportunities are more visible and accessible to women innovators.

Our progress to date

We have taken significant steps to increase the visibility of Innovate UK opportunities by sharing them consistently across our channels, including the Innovate UK Business Connect Opportunities and Events pages, our dedicated Women in Innovation newsletter, and the Women in Innovation LinkedIn group.

Through our No Limits platform, innovators can now explore opportunities from more than 200 partners nationwide, with highlights regularly shared with the Women in Innovation community.

To further extend our reach, members Women in Innovation Community Forum are helping to amplify opportunities with their own communities and networks.

We said

We pledged to 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.

Our progress to date

Innovate UK’s Inclusive Innovation team are now part of our Strategy and Performance directorate. This important structural change ensures that feedback and insights from our Women in Innovation community are feeding directly into our future strategy.

Alongside this move, Innovate UK is developing an inclusive innovation framework that will be central to how we deliver our strategy – embedding inclusion and representation into the core of who we are as an organisation, how we work and who we work with. This framework will optimise our programmes and interventions for outcomes, growth, and alignment with government priorities by ensuring they are inclusive by design.

We said

We committed to releasing 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.

Our progress to date

We are on track to publish the updated report late Autumn 2025, providing a transparent overview of who is applying for Innovate UK support and who is receiving it. The report will examine two years of lead applicant data, covering a range of characteristics, including age, gender, ethnicity and disability.

This analysis will enhance our understanding of the accessibility and inclusivity of Innovate UK support and offer fresh insights into the educational and socio-economic backgrounds of lead applicants.

We said

We committed to convening key stakeholders and partners to coordinate efforts and enhance support for women-led businesses, building on existing government-led initiatives.

Our progress to date

On 25 September 2025, Innovate UK hosted the Invest in Innovation: Capital Connect Forum. This provided a platform to strengthen alignment with the Invest in Women Taskforce, British Business Bank, UKBAA and other strategic partners.

The opening session, with Debbie Wosskow OBE (Co-Chair, Invest in Women Taskforce), set the tone – spotlighting the compelling opportunity to invest in women founders, the strength of the pipeline of investable deal flow, and practical ways investors could get involved. Innovate UK officially announced sign up to the Investing in Women Code and encouraged others to follow suit.

Innovate UK is committed to investing in women-led businesses to support rapid growth and scale. We will work closely with key partners to ensure our support is aligned and our investor partners will be invited to engage directly with future rounds of the Women in Innovation Awards.

We said

We committed to developing standardised application questions, which will be rolled out across Innovate UK competitions.

Our progress to date

Innovate UK is making several key improvements to our application processes. This includes a user-tested framework with a standardised bank of questions to be used across all Innovate UK competitions.

This change will not only make the process clearer for applicants but also allows them to repurpose their responses more efficiently when applying to future opportunities.

The tested framework will be piloted in the Women in Innovation Awards 2025/26.

Find out more: Innovate UK improves their path to funding.

We said

We committed to developing a new method of assessor classification to ensure our assessment process is fit for the future.

Our progress to date

A cross-functional project team at Innovate UK, informed by focus groups and recruitment experts, is developing a matrix-based approach to assessor matching. The new system classifies assessors holistically – covering technical, sector and application-area knowledge, as well as their familiarity with different business stages. This will help us more accurately match assessors to applications.

We said

We committed to recruiting a more diverse assessor pool and working towards a goal of 50% women assessors.

Our progress to date

We’ve listened to feedback from applicants, innovation communities, and colleagues. Assessment is a key part of the funding journey, and we know the assessor recruitment process needs to be more transparent, fair and inclusive. On 17 September 2025, we launched our new approach to assessor recruitment, taking steps to ensure the campaign reaches more women.

Find out more: Join Innovate UK as an Expert Assessor in Advanced Connectivity Technologies.

We said

We committed to continuing to develop guidance for our assessors, including Equality Diversity and Inclusion.

Our progress to date

A new suite of guidance has been developed and is now being integrated into the mandatory onboarding process for all assessors. These new resources, which will be regularly updated, cover topics including:

• Understanding and reducing bias
• Writing inclusive and constructive feedback
• Ethical decision-making