A programme designed for businesses to unlock their innovation potential has been relaunched, building on the success of the first North East SME Innovation Programme, which ran until August 2015.
The North East Business and Innovation Centre (BIC) has received £820,439 of funding from the England European Regional Development Fund as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020.
The Fund will assist businesses in the North East to become more innovative, allowing them to increase their competitiveness and exploit more opportunities, bringing benefits to the region.
Over the next three-years, the programme will support over 60 SMEs, providing the funding required to outsource help from innovation experts, enabling them to produce new products, services or processes to the business and/or the market. Innovation manager, Elizabeth Shaw said:
“I am delighted to announce that following the highly successful SME Innovation Programme delivered to NE businesses and the appetite in R&D expenditure for the benefit of increasing innovative activity, we now have the opportunity to continue to help businesses unlock their innovation potential.
“Each SME will receive access to third party expertise in the innovation process and, as a result, will gain an understanding of the knowledge and skills required to undertake further projects within the business.
“In order to prosper, businesses must innovate and whilst most would agree with the sentiment, it can be difficult to know where to begin. This project will enable us to work with individual businesses to diagnose potential development opportunities and make vital connections.”