The Fund operates under strict eligibility criteria for both applicants and projects. These eligibility criteria are provided below for your information, however, it should be noted that this is not an exhaustive list and whilst your application may meet all of these criteria, the Fund is competitive and applications may be rejected for a number of reasons at any stage of the process.

 

Applicants must be located in the West Midlands and must either conform to the European Small and Medium Enterprise definition (click here to read the SME definition as defined by the European Commission) or be a university based in the West Midlands.

 

The Advantage Proof of Concept Grant Fund is designed to support established and start-up businesses developing innovative new products and processes and to assist in the spin-out of new enterprises from universities in the West Midlands. It supports applicants to investigate, advance and protect early stage innovative business ideas and to commercialise new innovations.

Applications will be required to demonstrate a high level of technical innovation and innovation within the market sector in which they operate. This innovation must be articulated clearly within the application.

 

All high quality applications will be considered regardless of sector, however, priority will be given to five key technology areas:

 

Projects that can be supported by the fund must fall into one of the five categories below:

Applicants need not balance their applications to draw money from every category and applications focussing on one category will be considered. However, in most cases the latter two categories will be used to support activities covered in the first three.

 

The Fund is only able to award money toward costs external to the company and will only pay grants retrospectively based on 75% of the value, net of recoverable VAT, of defrayed invoices.

Internal costs to the company will not be considered eligible in any circumstances.

 

The Fund is worth approximately £5.8 million. Applicants may apply for grants of between £5k and £30k which represents up to 75% of total project costs. However, it is expected that other than in exceptional circumstances, awards of less than £15k will not be considered.

The £5.8 million Advantage Proof of Concept Grant Fund was launched in 2008 to promote economic growth through innovation by supporting many of the third party costs that businesses face when developing new products and processes.

It was set up by the University of Warwick Science Park with funding from Advantage West Midlands and the European Regional Development Fund to provide grants of up to £30k for universities and businesses developing innovations that have significant economic potential.