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Businesses race to win IPO innovation competition

University-industry projects working on social and economic innovation could win up to £100,000 from a competition launched by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO).

The Fast Forward competition is offering a fund of £750,000 to universities and public sector organisations that are working alongside the local business community.

Social innovation and economic growth are top priorities for the Fast Forward fund, and projects that focus on these issues will receive between £10,000 and £100,000 in the third annual delivery of the competition.

In the past two years, Fast Forward has awarded £1.25m of prize money to 23 initiatives in a wide range of sectors, including creative industries, medical research and social enterprises.

Sean Dennehey, the IPO’s Chief Executive,said UK universities “are also hubs of innovation, creating and harnessing intellectual property to fuel market competitiveness and economic growth.”

He continued: “Fast Forward recognises and rewards projects that demonstrate innovative approaches to university-industry collaborations, providing funding that can help create new companies and services which benefit the UK economy and society.”

One past recipient of the Fast Forward prize was the Bloodhound@University project at the University of West England in Bristol.

The programme is developing the “Bloodhound Super Sonic Car”, which aims to break the world land speed record.

Fast Forward gave the project an £80,000 prize, which was used to protect intellectual property (IP) produced during the development of the car.

Dr John Lanham, Director of Bloodhound@University at the University of the West of England said: “The IPO’s Fast Forward funding has enabled the project to foster an open and collaborative approach to IP sharing.

“The BloodhoundSSC project will share data from the designing, building, testing and running of the car to provide unprecedented access to teachers, lecturers and students.”

The Bloodhound project said it will work alongside small and medium sized technology businesses to help them foster similar practices in IP protection to improve competitiveness in the sector.

Projects can apply to the Fast Forward competition up to the 14th December this year, and winning programmes will be judged on how much they benefit the UK economy and society by improving IP management and Knowledge Exchange.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Miranda Dobson .