West Midlands Combined Authority welcomes expressions of interest from stakeholders to help shape the programme of interventions to be delivered through the West Midlands Innovation Accelerator.
About the West Midlands Innovation Accelerator
Announced in the Government’s 2022 Levelling up White Paper, The West Midlands Innovation Accelerator serves the purpose of forging a new co-design relationship between the region and Government, ensuring the region benefits from the commitment to an increase in overall UK public Research and Development (R&D) funding to £20bn by 2024/5.
The Innovation Accelerator will be funded through a share of a new £100m fund, to be divided by three regional Innovation Accelerators over the next three years, to bolster the region’s innovation and R&D capability and capacity to spark commercial growth and investment.
Strategic Priorities
Aligning with the West Midlands Plan for Growth, the Innovation Accelerator will build on our Manufacturing and Engineering strengths and be focused on two key areas:
- HealthTech & MedTech
- CleanTech
Vision
“To accelerate the growth of regional clusters of excellence in HealthTech & MedTech and CleanTech, delivered through the exploitation of applied and translational research; the application of regional strengths in engineering, manufacturing and advanced computing; and supported by a robust regional innovation framework”
The Innovation Accelerator will be used to accelerate our region’s engineering R&D and Innovation strengths that lie at the very heart of our universities, economy and our manufacturing supply chains, pivoting them to springboard the growth industries of the future. By precision-injection of resources and expertise into just the right economic spaces we will stimulate and mobilise vibrant clusters of highest growth potential as force multipliers.
Submitting Your Ideas
This stage of the process focusses on the Innovation Accelerator programme development. Please refer to the identified challenges and opportunities for each sector as these will help guide your thinking about appropriate and impactful interventions.
A webform is embedded within the Innovation Accelerator webpage to assist with the collation of your ideas.
The deadline for expressions of interest is 1st August 2022.
Further details on next steps can be found on the webpage.
Slingshot