Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £4 million in innovation projects that use people-centred and planet-centred design methods to transform where we live and work into net zero places. This funding is from Innovate UK.
The aim of this competition is to help businesses use people-centred and planet-centred design methods to lay the foundations for innovative ideas with the potential to deliver significant benefits. The purpose of this will be to support the transformation of our homes and places of work into net zero environments. These can be ideas for new or significantly improved products, services, places or business models.
Eligible organisations can apply for funding to use people-centred and planet-centred design methods to:
Your proposal must look at the need or opportunity from the perspective of the people involved. You must make sure that proposed solutions are more desirable and beneficial and, as such, are more likely to be adopted or to result in net zero-supportive behaviour change.
Applications are encouraged from organisations that have not previously used people-centred and planet-centred design processes or expertise. We encourage you to work with design experts to get the best results and to develop your own understanding and capabilities.
This competition is split into 2 strands:
It is your responsibility to ensure you submit your application to the correct strand for your project. You will not be able to transfer your application and it will not be sent for assessment if it is out of scope.
In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process.
This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated.
The aim of this competition is to help businesses use people-centred and planet-centred design methods to lay the foundations for innovative ideas with the potential to deliver significant benefits. These can be ideas for new or significantly improved products, services, places or business models.
To be within scope for the net zero round of this competition, your proposal must fall within one or more of the following 3 categories:
To be within scope for this competition, your proposal must also meet the following criterion:
Your project must explore opportunities and ideas from the perspective of the people and socio-technical systems who will be involved with, or affected by them, in the context of the transition to a net zero economy. Their experiences, motivations and behaviour must be allowed to shape the challenge and ideas. This is to make sure that:
You must include activities to identify and involve relevant stakeholders sufficiently early and at appropriate points throughout the project. Your project team should reflect the characteristics, culture and lived experiences of the people they are designing for, or take steps to bring those perspectives into the project in a meaningful and relevant way.
Projects that use planet-centred or system-aware approaches to consider nature as a stakeholder, and to design beneficial solutions within the limits of planetary resources and ecosystems are particularly encouraged. These projects must also take account of people’s motivations and behaviour, so that ideas have the best chance of being adopted and realising their potential.
Any prototyping activity within your project must:
Once the project has started successful applicants are encouraged to respond to findings emerging from the project and new discoveries made during the research and design process. This might include abandoning or rethinking your original ideas and changing the focus of planned R&D activity. Innovate UK will consider well-justified project change requests submitted via a project’s allocated monitoring service provider.
Applications are encouraged from organisations that have not previously used people-centred and planet-centred design processes or expertise. We encourage applicants to work with design experts as partners or subcontractors to get the best results and to develop their own understanding and design capabilities.
Portfolio approach
We want to fund a variety of projects that:
We call this a portfolio approach.
Your project must focus on net zero living, but may also cut across one or more of the following:
This list is not exhaustive
We are not funding projects that:
We are not funding projects that are proposals to create prototypes or demonstrators in cases where the prototype:
We cannot fund projects that: