Innovate UK Business Connect
With 200 staff across the UK, deep sector expertise and over 44,000 organisations in its network, Innovate UK Business Connect exists to connect innovators with new partners and new opportunities beyond their existing thinking to accelerate ambitious ideas into real-world solutions.
Support for innovators
Whether you’re a sole entrepreneur at pre-revenue stage or a well-established business with significant turnover, Innovate UK Business Connect is here to support your ambitions, accelerate your innovation ideas and help you grow and scale.
Spanning all technology sectors across the UK, Innovate UK Business Connect is here to understand your unique requirements and help connect you with the funding, networks, sector stakeholders and wider business support needed to ensure long-term success.
Private sector clients
Innovate UK Business Connect works with private clients to help them understand current and emerging markets, identify commercial opportunities and give them a competitive advantage for future investments.
Public sector clients
Innovate UK Business Connect amplifies the value and impact of public sector interventions by delivering a rich activity portfolio in support of public sector programmes addressing market and system failures, especially around network failures and information asymmetry.
Find out more about Innovate UK Business Connect.
Experimental medicine initiative to explore new therapies (EMINENT)
EMINENT is a collaborative, cross-sector network between the Medical Research Council (MRC), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and five UK universities. It allows university researchers work with GSK to access the company’s portfolio of live medicines, in-house drug development and bioinformatics expertise to support research translation.
Find out more about the EMINENT Consortium.
MRC-AstraZeneca Centre for Lead Discovery (CLD)
Medical researchers’ investigation of small molecule medicinal drugs can receive support to collaborate with AstraZeneca’s CLD facility at Alderley Park, Cheshire, including access to over 2 million molecules in AstraZeneca’s compound library and their state-of-the-art high-throughput screening facilities.
Read the open funding opportunity Develop new approaches to small molecule medicine.
Horticulture and Potato Initiative (HAPI)
The Horticulture and Potato Initiative connects academic and industrial partners to support the translation of pre-competitive horticultural and potato research.
It is managed by BBSRC and NERC, with Scottish Government and businesses from the fresh produce sector.
Find out more about the Horticulture and Potato Initiative.
UK Aquaculture Initiative
A joint BBSRC and NERC initiative to support innovative research and research translation in developing a healthy, safe and sustainable UK aquaculture system.
Find out more about the UK Aquaculture Initiative.
Researchers in Residence
The EPSRC-funded Innovation Launchpad Network+ brings together cross-functional teams from academia and the Catapults to stimulate the exchange of ideas and knowledge. A key mechanism to achieve the network’s goals is through the delivery of Researchers in Residence (RiR) awards.
These awards are designed to enable academic researchers to work with the Catapults, undertaking a project or activity in an area of strategic importance to collaboratively develop new technologies, tools and techniques. Successful applicants will be awarded up to £50,000 to cover a maximum of six months of university salary costs, travel and accommodation during the placement.
Find out more about Researchers in Residence.
Last updated: 5 February 2025