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Accelerated Knowledge Transfer to Innovate (AKT2I) pilot

07 Sep 2022

Innovate UK have released application forms and formal guidance about the AKT.

The first round of Innovate UK’s Accelerated Knowledge Transfer to Innovate (AKT2I) pilot scheme opens at midday on Wednesday 7 September 2022, and closes at midday on Friday 23 September 2022.   

AKT Round 2 will open on 26 September and close on Friday 21 October 2022.  If there is any budget remaining a third call will open on 24 October and close 24 November 2022.

Summary of Scope

  • Projects can be in any research area and are designed to enable organisations to accelerate access to academic expertise, to evaluate or develop an innovative idea for the partner. Projects should aim to stimulate traction and demand within the business to pursue further innovation and accelerate delivery though further collaboration with the University. Projects should aim to de-risk the innovation pathway for the partner, through for example, development of future business strategy, addressing scale up challenges, prototype development, trials and validation or research in real world applications.  Innovate UK are also open to supporting projects that are testing and experimenting with new methods that apply the fast failure approach.  ‘Failing Fast’ is a successful outcome for an AKT project. The value of such outcomes should be discussed in the final report.
  • The project should start as soon as is practicable and within one calendar month from the receipt of the grant offer letter.
  • What are the expected outcomes of an AKT project? A short report outlining the project activities and outcomes, PowerPoint presentation given by the associate to the business summarising the reports content, and a case study for publication.
  • AKT is about evaluating an innovation project or concept for the partner, so an AKT project will ideally exploit existing knowledge within the University, so should not be used where the likely outcomes for the project are solely research based.

Funding

  • Up to £3m is available for this initiative.
  • Projects must run for between two and four months.
  • The maximum grant will be £35,000 per project.
  • The partner organisation must contribute 10% (minimum) of the total project costs in cash.
  • There is no upper limit to the cash contribution from the partner.

The partner must:

  • Be a UK registered business, charity, or charitable company 
  • Have the ability and capacity to exploit outcomes from the project
  • Demonstrate to the Knowledge Base partner they have sufficient funds to support their contributions to the project
  • Employ a minimum of four FTEs but no cap or maximum FTE value. Large companies can apply.

Eligibility criteria for the Associate

  • The Associate must be employed by the Knowledge Base on a temporary or permanent basis and named in the application. The Associate must be appropriately skilled to deliver the AKT project. The minimum requirement is a Level 5 qualification (or equivalent qualification) or relevant significant experience. Recent graduates, master’s students, PhD candidates, post docs, lab technicians, research assistants and early career researchers are all potential AKT Associates.
  • Could an academic act as an Associate?  - Yes as long as the available grant (maximum of £35,000) will ‘buy’ enough time for the academic to deliver the project. Note that the Associate and the Supervisor cannot be the same person.
  • Does the Associate have to be based in the UK? - The Associate will need to be in the UK and will be employed by the Knowledge Base Partner.

Academic Supervision

Academic supervision may be delivered virtually and should be appropriate to ensure successful project delivery. The minimum level of this supervision is 0.25 days per week.

Next steps

If you or colleagues would like to explore submitting an AKT application please, ask them to contact Jo Summers and Anya Visegorodceva to assist with the application development, request costings and lead on submission. 

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