For businesses of all sizes and sectors, a set of fresh ideas and new ways of working can often be the key to a successful and secure future. Yorkshire Forward recognises this and is helping to provide the tools needed to encourage small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to find new ways of thinking, problem solving and working.

Jim Farmery, Yorkshire Forward’s assistant director of business competitiveness, says: “Innovation is always important but if you are in a much more competitive market, it is more important ever before to have products that stand apart, that offer different benefits to the customer.”

The Innovation Vouchers Scheme, accessed through Business Link Yorkshire, has provided more than 500 businesses in the region with the chance to work with academic and industrial experts to help them develop new and improved products and services.

The vouchers, worth up to £3,000, have proved so successful that in September Yorkshire Forward approved an investment of £5.7million to enable Business Link Yorkshire to continue to run the scheme until December 2011.

Innovation vouchers provide SME s with a first step to partner with organisations which can help them develop better practices. This can include research into a company’s markets, identification of new materials and products to find a solution to a problem or exploiting new technologies.

Business Link Yorkshire has signed up all the Yorkshire and Humber universities, numerous colleges and research organisations, to the scheme.

Innovation Vouchers
Farmery says: “We’re trying to take as open an approach as possible, making the scheme as flexible as possible, so companies can partner with a wide range of other organisations to work on their project.”

Each month, companies are invited to enter into a voucher draw. Companies can also pool their vouchers if they want to solve a common problem. The Pooled Application Form allows a group of up to 10 companies to work in collaboration.
Farmery adds: “We hope the voucher is used as the start of a relationship.”
An innovation voucher sparked off an ongoing relationship between design consultancy Fit For Purpose and Sheffield Hallam University.

Ideas into action
The Leeds-based consultancy specialises in designing products for the nursery industry. After developing numerous commercially successful products for other companies, Managing Director Christian Ritson decided it was time to launch his own range of nursery products and got in touch with Business Link Yorkshire to find out what support was on offer. An adviser from the organisation suggested Christian take part in the innovation voucher draw for March this year – in which he was successful.

Ritson says: “The voucher was a definite helping hand. Anybody that is starting a venture and is being entrepreneurial is risking a lot of their time and money, so any leg-up is appreciated.”

Expert knowledge

The voucher was used to prove the technical viability of an innovative new product using the expert knowledge and skills of a small team of people from the University’s Design Futures department. Ritson explains: “Through the voucher I was able to access knowledge of specific materials which allowed me to push the design to its limits.” Ritson plans to work with the University for his second innovation project, to get a newly developed cot production-ready.
He says: “I think the support that Yorkshire Forward offers to entrepreneurs benefits not just the business but the whole region.” The vouchers and networks form part of a raft of initiatives provided by Yorkshire Forward to help businesses capitalise on innovation.

www.businesslink.gov.uk/yorkshire/innovation
Article courtesy of Yorkshire Forward