We’d had the concept of REX for a few years and had a decent POC, but, as a consultancy, he was never really our main focus.

When covid hit and there was a massive dip in consultancy we were faced with either furloughing staff, which we didn’t want to do, or finding a new income stream. We were directed to the Innovate UK grants by a friend and emboldened by panic embarked on our first Innovate UK grant application.

Ultimately for us, going through this process really helped us to understand our product, which helped us to find its voice. Being tied to an external scope and timelines helped us focus the delivery and set achievable deadlines. The application feedback highlighted are areas of weakness so we could address and strengthen them. The additional support helped us with coaching and support to do this. In the space on 9 months, we’ve gone from a janky POC to a proper grown-up product.

Now, with four applications (all scoring over 79%) under our belt, this is what we learned:

• Only apply if you really need the money, it’s a huge amount of admin and the tight scope doesn’t suit every project.
• Really read the scope and the guidance, we got it wrong for the first one and asked for the wrong amount of money - it caused endless problems down the line.
• Don’t leave it to the last minute, seriously, it takes way longer that you think, and your first pass will be shit.
• If you have left it till the last minute, do it anyway, the feedback on an unsuccessful application is still super useful.
• Be really clear about what your innovation is, it could be reviewed by both technical and non-technical people, so has to accessible.
• Make sure you understand your target market. You will have to demonstrate how the innovation will be exploited later on. This is a major scoring section of the application.
• Have your delivery team in place before you apply, be clear if you need to recruit who, and how. Team cohesion is critical for the success of smaller projects.
• Get someone external to review it, if they can’t understand your proposal, it’s likely others won’t.