Working in partnership between business and academia can have the following benefits:
- access to knowledge and skills
- access to facilities, either in a university or provided by a business
- investment for research
- enabling business to innovate
Find research and development partners to collaborate with
Business Connect provide information on Innovation Networks and how they can help you reach stakeholders and collaborate.
You can search for partners using Konfer which matches businesses and researchers to enable them to work together on developing an idea.
Funding for knowledge exchange
Knowledge exchange funding supports collaboration and the flow of ideas between academic researchers and external partners. These programmes enable research insights and innovations to be shared, adapted and applied in different contexts, ensuring the benefits of research extend beyond academia.
These schemes enable partnerships between researchers and industry:
- Prosperity partnerships allow business and academic institutions to invest in research
- Knowledge Transfer Partnerships to enable business and academics to work together
- Impact Acceleration Accounts is funding provided to research organisations to use for a range of commercialisation activities, you can apply directly to your research organisation
- Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF) is given to organisations to support knowledge exchange
Business Engagement Forum
The Business Engagement Forum provides regular opportunities for two-way engagement with key business stakeholders and other non-academic collaborators. It is a community of enterprise and non-enterprise partners representing the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council remit.
Last updated: 19 December 2025