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Led by Innovate UK on behalf of UK Research and Innovation, the pilot Innovation Accelerators programme invested £100m in 26 transformative R&D projects to accelerate the growth of three high-potential innovation clusters – Glasgow City Region, Greater Manchester and West Midlands. This is a new model of R&D decision making that empowers local leaders to harness innovation to drive regional economic growth, help attract private investment, and develop future technologies.
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The Challenge:
The West Midlands is a strong regional economy and has a strong innovation culture, however for the quality of its ingredients, its corporate anchors do not play a sufficiently active role in supporting key innovation sectors and as such, the start-up/ scale-up environment is not operating at a level that resonates on the global stage. This project is seeking to not only increase capacity through corporate demand led challenge programmes, but to do so in a way that transcends the boundaries of the West Midlands and the UK.
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Main Objectives:
1.Secure innovation leadership and investment from global grands.
2.Attract 150 startups to apply to be part of the programme.
3.Showcase the West Midlands ecosystem through programme design (West Midlands immersion program, regional visits, marketing, structured stakeholder sessions).
4.Partner with regional cluster bodies [i.e. SuperTech, MAAS, TechWM] to support wider ecosystem growth through collaborative comms effort to enhance global reach of brand WM and to provide intelligence to support wider ecosystem growth.
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Main Outcomes:
1.Secure follow-on private sector investment from at least one global corporate WM based brand post programme
2.50 referrals into cluster body and WMGC with target of [20%] retention rate of global participants in WM after 6 months post completion
3.100% Increase in volume of enquiries into cluster body and WMGC from non-WM and non-UK tech SMEs relevant (e.g. clean tech/ fintech etc.)
Slingshot