Innovate UK Smart grants: November 2024

Innovate UK’s Smart grants programme is intrinsically positioned, by design, as a focused and uniquely differentiated product to support and propel the government’s five key missions: 

1. Driving economic growth 
2. Advancing clean energy 
3. Enhancing public safety 
4. Expanding opportunities 
5. Strengthening healthcare 

Proposals must be business-focused and show deliverable, realistic, adequately resourced plans to achieve return on investment, growth, and market share, following project completion. 

Project Size and Length

• Projects of 6 to 18 months must have total eligible project costs between £100,000 and £500,000, and can be single or collaborative. 

• Projects of 19 to 24 months must have total eligible project costs between £100,000 and £1 million, and must be collaborative only. 

Specific Themes 

Your project must focus on: 

• Taking customer and user needs into account to deliver more desirable and useful solutions. 

• Identifying who is ready to buy your innovation. 

• Being developed, planned and resourced beyond the end of the Innovate UK funded project, taking into account the focus of any project partners and their existing commitments. 

• Fitting in with and complementing your ongoing business planning and development, product offerings and organisational structure to maximise chances of success.