LJMU Innovation Voucher Success

23 September 2009

The Northwest Regional Development Agency’s (NWDA) £4.1million Innovation Voucher scheme is designed to help support and grow the North West economy by encouraging businesses to engage with the regional knowledge base.

The scheme provides vouchers of up to £3,000 or £7,000 to small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs), including social enterprises, that need support with a piece of work that is not eligible for other NWDA grants. Using a voucher, organisations can ‘purchase’ support from a registered knowledge provider to help increase productivity, competitiveness and efficiency.
 
Since the scheme started at the start of the year, there have been 503 innovation vouchers issued.  LJMU, one of 26 knowledge providers in the North West, has already been the provider of choice for 40 organisations and requests for support continue to flow in.

One such request came from Xenon 54 Limited, the promotional products specialists based in Manchester, who used their voucher to undertake focus groups at LJMU’s unique innovation lab, The Automatic.

Xenon Director, Paul Haydock, said: “The focus groups provided an invaluable insight into the target demographic for one of our new ventures. By utilising the facilities and technology at The Automatic, we were able to swiftly identify the common traits of our primary consumers – an absolutely essential exercise. We would like to thank all the team at the Automatic and congratulate them on creating a wonderful service for their clients.”

Stephen Fisher, Business Development Research Manager within the Business Development Centre who is coordinating LJMU’s involvement with the scheme, said: “Many SMEs are not aware of how to access the expertise available within the local knowledge base or may not have considered the potential benefits of collaborating with a university. The Innovation Voucher Scheme is proving to be an effective way of encouraging SMEs to collaborate with LJMU around a specific piece of work and this initial collaboration is then being sustained and developed into other forms of knowledge exchange.”

He continued: “For the academics concerned, the projects are interesting commercial ventures which, while challenging, are not overly demanding and can offer opportunities to involve students.  As the vouchers are also leading to further commercial activity, the scheme offers significant benefits both for SMEs and for LJMU.”

What is particularly encouraging is that innovation vouchers are being used to secure support from across the University, with all Faculties involved in making a positive difference to organisations in the northwest and benefiting from the commercial experience and the further opportunities the vouchers afford.

For more information about NWDA Innovation Vouchers please contact Stephen Fisher, Business Development Research Manager, on: 0151 231 8073 or email: s.fisher@ljmu.ac.uk

For further details about the Innovation Voucher Scheme, visit: www.nwdabusinessfinance.co.uk/innovation-vouchers

For more information about The Automatic, visit: www.ljmu.ac.uk/automatic