Innovation Vouchers

Do you have an idea that you believe could transform your life, business or even the world?

Your idea might be new technology or processes to cut costs or improve efficiency, improving existing products within your business to become more competitive, or it might be a completely new business venture altogether. Whatever it is, an Invest Northern Ireland Innovation Voucher could help you take your idea and create that all-important value.

As an entrepreneur or a new start-up, it can be difficult to access the expertise you need to overcome the many challenges you will face, especially in the early stages of your product or service development. An Innovation Voucher can help you access the right help and advice at the right time; the programme helps small and medium enterprises, social enterprises and third sector organisations engage with knowledge providers on innovation projects. The nature of this engagement lends itself well to the early stages of the innovation journey where the support provided is in the form of technical or other written reports which can be vital in helping the innovator to resolve technical challenges or to validate a product concept.

Innovation Vouchers have also helped in the development of prototypes and in some cases have led to the development of a market ready product ready. Overcoming technical challenges or seeking expert analysis in the early stages of product and service development can be vital in determining if continued investment should go into developing the idea further. The support provided by knowledge providers can be an important source of support in helping the entrepreneur to help make informed decisions about progressing their product or service to the next stage or to quickly kill the idea before further investment is made.

An Innovation Voucher is the perfect way to get support through each stage of the innovation process. Each voucher offers up to £5K support, allowing you to team up with a world-class university, further education college or technology institute, and to work together on an agreed innovation project.

You can tap into their knowledge and experience, as well as make use of their state of the art facilities to carry out vital idea validation and start to turn your idea into something real. Hundreds of Northern Ireland businesses have benefitted from an Innovation Voucher, helping them to enhance their product offering, scale up production, and even break into new export markets.

Invest Northern Ireland is now accepting applications for an Innovation Voucher, so now is the time to explore new ways of improving your business and to take your business to the next level.

If you run a small business, apply for an Invest NI Innovation Voucher.

The deadline for applications is Friday 12 May at 15:00.