Dates:
Competition closes: 15 January 2025 11am
Applicants notified: 07 March 2025
Project start date & duration: Start by 01 June 2025 (6 month project length)
Scope
To be within scope of this competition, your proposal must be one or more of the following three categories:
1. Defining innovation opportunities: You will use people centred and systemic design methods to identify, understand and prioritise needs and innovation opportunities that are relevant and valuable to your business. You will plan design led innovation activity to address these opportunities, including generating, testing and improving new ideas.
2. Generating new ideas: You have identified a specific need or opportunity and will use design methods to verify it, then generate and develop new or improved ideas in response.
3. Improving existing innovative ideas: You have an innovative idea and will use design methods to simulate, test, and validate it, enhancing its quality and the benefits it provides throughout its lifecycle.
Specific Themes
- net zero
- artificial intelligence and machine learning
- other emerging or advanced digital technologies
- health and wellbeing
- food and agriculture (except primary production)
This list is not exhaustive..
Projects that will not be funded
- Do not follow best practice design methods and principles as described in the competition scope
- focus on the final finish or specification of an idea where fundamental design decisions have already been made, for example, where new customer feedback or discoveries will have little influence on the design outcome
- is a demonstration to be made fully functional at considerable effort or cost when partial or simulated functionality would suffice
- is a demonstration intended primarily to test technical feasibility or performance rather than the customer experience and benefits
Eligibility
- Must have a grant funding request of between £40,000 and £80,000
- Your total project costs will be 100% funded.
- To lead a project you must be a UK registered business of any size
- You must collaborate with at least one other grant claiming UK registered organisation
- Subcontractors are allowed they are limited to no more than 80% of the total eligible costs.
Funding Rates
Projects must have total costs across the UK and Netherlands of between £50,000 (€58,000) and £250,000 (€292,000)
| Organisation size | Feasibility Studies (TRL2-3) |
| Micro/small business | 100% |
| Medium sized business | 100% |
| Large business | 100% |
Research organisations in your consortium can share up to 80% of the UK total eligible project costs.
How PNO can support you
The UK team has a strong track record in securing some of the most competitive national and European grants on behalf of its clients, with a full understanding of how a project should be presented to stand the highest chance of success. Each year in the UK alone, we are responsible for the submission of more than 100 funding applications across all sectors and priority areas. Based on this extensive experience, through careful project selection and using key insight into how a project should be best positioned, we consistently achieve success rates that are more than 5 times the typical success rates for UK national schemes and EU programmes.
For further information or to discuss a project idea please contact PNO Consultants
0161 488 3488 | info.uk@pnoconsultants.com
