Notice

Competition guidance: global cooperation feasibility studies

Updated 21 September 2016

This notice was withdrawn on 21 September 2017

This competition is no longer open. Search current funding opportunities.

1. Dates and deadlines

Competition opens	5 August 2016
Final date for registration	Noon 21 September 2016
Submission of the full application	Noon 28 September 2016
Decision to applicants	End of October 2016

Please read the full competition scope before you make your application.

2. Funding

There is up to £1.2 million of funding available from Innovate UK. This is for feasibility study projects undertaken by SMEs that tackle the challenges described in the brief for this competition.

3. Requirements and eligibility

Eligible projects must fall under the feasibility study research category. A full definition of this category is available in the guidance for applicants section of our website:

• Innovate UK will fund up to 70% of eligible project costs for each micro/small organisation and up to 60% of eligible costs for each medium sized organisation
• only UK organisations can receive grants from Innovate UK
• awards will be made for projects with total costs of up to £30,000
• projects must be completed and all costs incurred and paid before end of March 2017
• only UK-based SMEs are eligible to apply
• research organisations are not eligible to participate
• all applications will be assessed on individual merit in accordance with the normal Innovate UK process

Visit our website for more information on funding and state aid definitions

4. How to apply

Before you apply into an Innovate UK competition, it is important to understand the whole application process. The information below is specific to this competition. In addition, please read our general guidance for applicants which will give information on:

• funding rules
• project costs
• state aid
• how to submit your application
• categories of research and development
• participation in a project

You will receive an email acknowledgement of your registration followed by a second email up to 48 hours later. The second email will contain a username and password for our secure upload facility along with a unique application number and form.

Application: Once you have received your unique username and password, you can sign into the secure website

Submit your documents. You or your lead partner should submit your application form supplied with your unique application number for this competition

Scope check: Only applications that meet the eligibility criteria and scope of the competition will be sent for assessment. You will be notified if your application is out of scope with full reasons as to why. Innovate UK reserves the right to declare applications as out of scope.

Assessment: Once the competition submission deadline is reached, your application is sent for assessment.

Notification: We will notify you or your lead partner of the outcome of your application on the date stated in the timeline.

Feedback: We will give feedback to successful and unsuccessful applicants approximately 4 weeks after you have been notified of the decision. The lead applicant can access the feedback by signing on to the secure website where you uploaded your application documents. It is the responsibility of the lead partner to communicate the feedback with the rest of the consortium. No additional feedback can be provided and there will be no further discussion on the application.

5. The application form

This section explains the structure of the application form and offers guidance on what to answer in each question.

The structure is as follows:

• application details
• summary of proposed project
• section 1 to 4: marked questions
• public description of the project
• finance summary table

Please make sure that you upload the final version of your application by the deadline. It is your responsibility to make sure that you do not upload a blank or incomplete application form.

• you can only use the application form provided. It contains specific information including a unique reference number for your project
• the application form contains specific fields. It is important that you complete each field and submit a fully completed form. Incomplete forms will be rejected
• the application form must not be altered, converted or saved as a different version of Microsoft Word
• the space provided in each field of the form is fixed. You must restrict your responses in each of the fields to the space provided. The typeface, font size and colour are predetermined and cannot be changed. Illustrations and graphics cannot be included in the application form. Please check your completed application form in PRINT LAYOUT: any text that can’t be seen in this view or when the form is printed will not be assessed
• the light grey shaded fields are completed automatically from other information entered on the form, such as the total columns of a table. These cannot be overwritten

Field	Guidance
Competition name	This field will show the full name of the Innovate UK competition to which the form applies. You do not need to enter anything here.
Project title	Enter the full title of the project.
Theme In which innovation area does your project best fit? This will allow Innovate UK to select the external assessors to review your application.	Please select from the list below: Theme Number: Project Theme 1. Creative Industries - Media 2. Creative Industries - Computer Games 3. Creative Industries - Social Media 4. Creative Industries - Publishing 5. Creative Industries - General 6. Digital Services 7. Electronics, Photonics and Electrical Systems 8. Information and Communication Technology 9. Nanoscale Technologies 10. Materials 11. Biosciences – Industrial Biotechnology 12. Biosciences - Nutrition 13. Biosciences - ‘omics 14. Biosciences - General 15. Healthcare - Medical devices in-vivo 16. Healthcare - Medical devices ex-vivo 17. Healthcare - Diagnostics in vivo 18. Healthcare - Diagnostics in vitro 19. Healthcare - Therapeutic Development 20. Healthcare - E-health/M-health 21. Agriculture and Food 22. Manufacturing 23. Engineering 24. Environmental Sustainability - Resource Efficiency 25. Environmental Sustainability - Environmental Technologies 26. Environmental Sustainability - General 27. Energy Generation and Supply - Fuel Cells & Hydrogen 28. Energy Generation and Supply - Renewable Energy 29. Energy Generation and Supply - Nuclear 30. Energy Generation and Supply - General 31. Built Environment - Low Impact Buildings 32. Built Environment - General 33. Transport - Aerospace 34. Transport - Road - Low Carbon Vehicles 35. Transport - Road - other vehicles 36. Transport - Marine 37. Transport - Rail 38. Transport - Integrated Transport 39. Space Technologies 40. General – Not listed above
Application details	Enter your total project cost, duration and contact details for you and the organisation.
Document ID	This field is completed automatically
Project/Applicant number	This field is completed automatically and is the reference that you should use on all correspondence (this is the 5 or 6 digit number after the dash).

5.1 Summary of proposed project (not scored)

Guidance

Please provide a short summary of the content and objectives of the project including what is innovative about it.

This summary is not scored, but provides an introduction to your proposal for the benefit of Innovate UK staff and assessors only. It will not be used for any public dissemination. It should cover, in brief:

• need or challenge: The business need, technological challenge or market opportunity to be addressed
• approach and innovation: The approach to be taken and how this will improve on current state-of-the-art
• outcomes: The difference the project will make to the competitiveness and productivity of the partners involved

6. Competition questions

All questions apply to all project partners and are scored out of 10 marks.

Question 1: How does your idea align with the competition scope and how will it impact the potential market?

You should :

• describe the emerging opportunity you want to focus on with the study, its market potential and how it relates to the competition scope
• describe the specific issues you want to address, why they are important and what you believe is needed to successfully resolve them
• describe the size of the market opportunities that subsequent development of the study might open up
• if applicable, state if and how the identified problem has potential for wider impact across sectors or across multiple application areas
• all applications must align with the specific competition scope criteria as described in the relevant competition brief

Question 2: What are you offering to do in the study? Which other organisations or individuals do you intend to work/contract with if applicable.

You should:

• provide an overview of your suggested work
• provide a descriptive plan
• provide a brief description of any organisation(s) you wish to work with

Question 3: The proposed impacts of the feasibility study and the follow-on activities predicted

You should provide an overview of the expected impact and potential follow-on activities that you predict from the study.

You should state what it is you will prepare; whether it is a report, presentation, demonstration etc.

All projects will be expected to create a final written report on their findings as part of project closure. If a report is your only output then you should add more detail. Describe the expected main headings for the report and how they target the project aims. If your project also generates information in a different format, tell us how this will be done and how this is relevant to the aims of the project.

Question 4: Why you need this grant; for instance, what is the added value of public sector support?

You should state why public funding is necessary for this project and why you are unable to fund it yourselves.

You should state what impact public sector funding will have on this project.

6.1 Public description of the project (not scored)

Guidance

To comply with government practice on openness and transparency of public-funded activities, Innovate UK has to publish information relating to funded projects. Please provide a short description of your proposal in a way that will be comprehensible to the general public. Do not include any commercially confidential information, for example intellectual property or patent details.

Please describe your project. Funding will not be provided to successful projects without this.

6.2 Partner Details

Please provide details of any partner organisation involved in the project.

7. Project costs

Information on which project costs are eligible for funding is available in our project costs guidance

Please note: for this competition partner finance forms are not required.