Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will work with the Innosuisse to invest up to £2 million in innovation projects.
The aim of this competition is to support UK-Swiss international business-led innovation collaboration. Through grant funding Innovate UK will support UK businesses to collaborate with Swiss counterparts for their mutual global growth prospects.
Your proposal must contribute to the development of commercial products, processes or technical services.
The project must have an obvious advantage and added value resulting from the cooperation between the participants, from the two jurisdictions. These advantages can include:
This list is not meant to be exhaustive.
In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated.
Eligibility
Your project
Your UK project must:
UK project partners must carry out the majority of their project work in the UK and intend to exploit the results from or in the UK.
The consortium must include at least one business registered in Switzerland that is a separate, non-linked entity. In order to receive any grant funding and continue as a feasible project, the project proposal must be successful on both sides of the consortium. If selected, UK participants will receive grant funding from Innovate UK and Swiss participants, if selected, will receive grant funding from Innosuisse.
UK participants must be part of an application submitted to Innovate UK. Swiss partners must submit a parallel application to the Innosuisse programme.
All businesses in a consortium must be separate legal and non-linked entities. This is to ensure that projects encourage genuine international collaboration, not internal company research. Linked companies are considered a single entity under the parent company.
Projects should have a balanced contribution of the total eligible project costs among the partners from the participating partner countries. No more than 70% of the total project costs can be claimed by any single partner or by all partners from a single participating country.
You must only include eligible project costs in your application.
Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian and Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian and Belarusian source.
If your project’s grant funding request or duration falls outside of our eligibility criteria, you must provide justification by email to support@iuk.ukri.org at least 10 working days before the competition closes. We will decide whether to approve your request.
If you have not requested approval or your application has not been approved by us, you will be made ineligible. Your application will then not be sent for assessment.
Lead organisation
To lead a project from the UK side your organisation must:
Any Swiss registered organisation that joins an application must be a separate legal entity which is not linked to the UK partners.
You must not invite your collaborating Swiss partners onto the Innovate UK’s IFS application platform Their involvement in the project is listed as part of your answers to the questions.
More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.
Project team
To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:
Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once accepted, partners will be asked to login or to create an account and enter their own project costs into the Innovation Funding Service.
Non-funded partners
Your project can include partners, including overseas partners, that do not receive any of this competition’s funding. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.
Subcontractors
Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.
You can use subcontractors from the UK, Switzerland and other countries but you must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the countries providing grant funding for the project. All subcontractors must be selected through your usual procurement process.
You must provide a detailed rationale and evidence of the potential UK or Swiss contractors you approached, with the reasons why they were unable to work with you. We will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use a subcontractor from a third country. All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate for the project.
Number of applications
An eligible UK business can lead on one application and collaborate on one further application.
If an organisation is not leading any application, it can collaborate in up to two applications.
The aim of this competition is to support UK-Swiss international business-led innovation collaboration. Through grant funding Innovate UK will support UK businesses to collaborate with Swiss counterparts for their mutual global growth prospects.
Your collaborative research and development (R&D) proposal must demonstrate:
Your full application consists of the completion of a joint call document to Innosuisse and a submission of the national applications at Innovate UK for UK partners and Innosuisse for Swiss partners.
If successful, your collaboration must submit the same common consortium agreement including an Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) agreement signed by all partners to Innovate UK and Innosuisse prior to start of the project. A failure to submit this document would make the application ineligible.
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