What is the Productivity through Innovation grant?
The Productivity through Innovation grant (PtI) can offer your business fully-funded or part-funded support, which will improve your organisation’s productivity and market competitiveness. The programme runs until March 2023 and is funded by the European Regional Development Fund. It’s been developed in partnership with the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University.
The programme will work closely with you to understand the business and identify any barriers to your performance and take opportunities to improve and accelerate business growth. This will result in a tailor-made package of support of one or both of the options below.
Who is the programme for:
Projects under Innovation and Productivity support companies that explore new areas of growth, look for ways to enhance efficiency, or optimise resource usage to improve their sustainability performance. Small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) across a wide range of industries and sectors in the Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire area (D2N2). The programme is particularly interested in working with research-active companies looking to work with Universities on innovative research projects. The programme is not suitable for new start-up businesses.
What’s on offer?
PtI aims to deliver an in-depth programme of support, working directly with participating businesses to identify and deliver meaningful and sustainable improvements. A two stage diagnostic will inform a bespoke support package that will aim to improvement in the below areas.
Eligibility
The PtI programme is open for applications from SMEs with an ambition to innovate across a wide range of industries and sectors.
To be eligible you must be an established SME in the D2N2 area (Derby/Derbyshire, Nottingham/Nottinghamshire). Further suitability for the project will be established through the diagnostic.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are defined as:
- less than 250 employees
- annual turnover under 50 million euros
- annual balance sheet less than 43 million euros