Innovation Vouchers
Eligible activities:
General activities and processes:
- New product/ process development
- New business model development
- Efficiency audit, process change
- Supply chain management and logistics
- New service delivery and customer interface
- New service development
- Product and service testing and economic impact assessment
- Innovation/technology audit
Specific activities where particular limitations apply:
- Exploiting advances web technologies for the region and/or industry (this does not include standard web design, development or search optimisation)
- Market research
- Equipment purchases to develop prototypes
- Capital items to develop prototypes
- Software purchases to develop prototypes
Types of processes that include the above themes:
- Opportunity Analysis to support your ideas in the Idea Screening Phase
- Idea Screening
- Concept development, prototyping and testing
- Development the marketing and engineering details
- Identification & investigation of intellectual property, including the process for intellectual property creation, protection (but not patent maintenance fees to Intellectual Property Office or relevant official organisations)
- Feasibility through virtual computer aided rendering and rapid prototyping
- Concept testing
- Development of Business Plan
- Beta Testing and Market Testing
- Producing a physical prototype or mock-up
- Testing the product (and its packaging) in typical usage situations
- Conducting focus group customer interviews
- Producing an initial run of the product
- Technical implementation
- New programme initiation
- Finalising Quality Management System
- Resource estimation
- Requirement publication
- Publishing technical communications such as data sheets
- Engineering operations planning
- Department scheduling
- Supplier collaboration
- Logistics plan
- Resource plan publication
- Program review and monitoring
- Contingencies - what-if planning
- Commercialization (often considered post-NPD)
- Launch the product
- Critical path analysis
- New Product Pricing
- Impact of new product on the entire product portfolio
- Value Analysis (internal & external)
- Analysis of competition and alternative competitive technologies
- Analysis of costs and selling price
- Forecast of unit volumes, revenue, and profit
Exploiting advanced web technologies for the region and/ or industry (this does not include standard web design, development or search optimisation)
- Consultancy towards IT Strategy and Value Optimisation
- Building security algorithms & AI
- Design & building of Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)
- Specialist electronic system, Software design and computer engineering tools
- Designing of Specialist CRM systems that drive hardware
- APP design & development for Mobile & portable devices (such as tablets, phones and PDAs)
- Development of GIS (Geographical Information Systems)
- Analysis and Design of Algorithms
- Electronic Communication and Concurrency
- Compression Methods for Multimedia
- Cryptography and Information Security
- System Modelling
- Distributed Systems and Applications
- Software Measurement and Quality Assurance
- Informatics (including Bioinformatics) e.g. Software & hardware design of fingerprint or IRIS
scanners etc. that can be controlled through web technologies
Market research
- Launch new products or services
- Off the shelf market research reports
- Customised market research done through professional consultants & market research Companies
- Overseas market entry research reports done by specialist Accredited organisations / trade & industry bodies in the UK & overseas
Ineligible activities:
- Achieving compliance with statutory regulations or legislation
- Intellectual property protection
- Standard training courses
- Software purchases
- Capital equipment purchases
- Aid that would promote/subsidise the cost of exports
- Internships for students of knowledge providers
- Design and production of advertising materials
- Sales and marketing activities –this includes standards website design, development and search optimisation (the only exception would be the exploitation of new web technology for the region and /or industry)
- Advertising and promotional activities e.g. design of posters leaflets etc.
- Accreditations
- Capital items
- Travel costs
- Continuation and existing projects with the knowledge providers
- Legal advice