Funding Information and Support Service (FISS) for innovative SMEs

Thank you Jonny, and hello everybody. Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. I'm Camille Moran, and I am going to be talking to you about the Funding Information and Support Service.

Oops, Jonny warned me not to do that. OK, so our agenda for today is, first, I'm going to be talking you through the support that's available to Scottish companies from Scottish Enterprise, and how we can help you win more external funding. 

After that, we're going to hand over to our friend, Mat Wasley from the Knowledge Transfer Network. And he's going to be talking about the support they offer to companies across the UK, and also going to be sharing some insider information about Innovate UK funding, and talking a little bit about some top tips for winning it.

Then we're going go on to our last speaker who's my colleague, Ulrike, who is going to be talking about how to write a proposal with keeping the assessor in mind. So knowing a little bit about what it's like to assess proposals and how you can really help the assessor give you a good score. 

Then, as Jonny mentioned, at the end of this session, we'll have a question and answer. So if you type your questions into the chat as we go, then we'll hopefully have enough time at the end to get through all of them.

OK, so, the first thing to discuss is what are we talking about with ‘external funding’, ‘other people's money’? You hear a lot of these terms coming around. Well, it's really important to us a Scottish Enterprise to clarify what that means and then all of the different resources that we have to help you win it. So, as far as external funding goes, what you can really think about is money coming into Scottish companies and organisations from outside of Scotland.

So that's usually competitive, it tends to be grant funding, usually innovation funding – these are some of the terms you may have heard. But essentially, the reason why we're interested in helping Scottish companies win it is because it is competitive, it's hard to get, and it's available to companies across the UK or Europe or globally in some instances. And we want to get a bigger share of that money into Scotland and into our companies. So, you can see at the top row there, that's what our primary focuses as our team, which is helping Scottish companies win non-Scottish competitive innovation funding. So some examples you may have heard of this are Innovate UK funding, which we're going to talk a lot about today, the Defence and Security Accelerator, SBRI programmes (which are contracts at the European Innovation Council, which I'll also go into in more detail, these used to be known as the SME instrument), EUREKA Eurostars, and a lot more.

And as far as what the Funding Information Support Service (or FISS) offers here, is we can provide you information on the sources and the types of funding available that might fit your project. We can also offer hands-on support for Scottish companies who are applying for it to increase your chances of success.

Now, we launched FISS about a year ago – some of you may have been to some of our earlier webinars. And one thing that is really important to companies, usually when they're looking for funding, is to be aware of as much funding as possible. Usually you have multiple things going on at the same time, you have different projects you’re looking to fund or different things in different stages of development. So, for that reason, we provide information on a lot of different types of funding. So we categorise this in the second row down as business growth funding, which you can think of as anything that isn't innovation. So, activities for your funding for your company to, say, hire new people, or get a new premise. You can see some of the examples that I have there: the Digital Development Loan, Scottish Edge funding, local authority funding, those kinds of things, and a lot of that tends to be from within Scotland, so while we can provide some information on that funding and what's available – because it's probably helpful if you're looking at funding in general to know broadly what's out there – we wouldn't provide the support side, because that money is already in Scotland. It's going go to a Scottish company, and we want to put our resource towards helping companies apply for money outside of Scotland, if that makes sense. But we're happy to provide information on that, and I'll tell you later what that looks like.

And then, of course, there's private investment, which we don't have in our database, but we can refer you to our colleagues on the Financial Readiness team, who can help you there. 

And there's also a lot of large consortia-based European funding out there – you may have heard the term Horizon Europe. And we have two teams here at Scottish Enterprise who help companies access this funding. And I know, maybe Mat will mention it, but the Knowledge Transfer Network holds a lot of events there, as well. So we can refer you to our colleagues at SEGEC, Scotland Europa, and the Scottish EU Funding Portal, if you're interested in those large consortia-based funding projects.

So if you didn't pay attention to anything on that slide, just know it's a big wide and complex funding landscape out there. Contact us, contact any of these organisations, and we'll try to get you to the right place.

OK, so going into the funding that we're interested in, UK and international innovation funding, and the top things for you to know as a potential applicant. 

First off, it's a very competitive. Success rates for the most popular funding streams that we work with tend to be 2% to 10%, and that varies depending on the cut-off date and the specific call. But in general, it's really, really competitive. So you need to know going into it that you might not win.

And generally, companies we work with, who are going through the process, want to get something out of the process of putting together a proposal other than just the potential funding. So, maybe it's help organising your ideas. It’s a system in which you can assess the market opportunity and make sure you have considered everything. And, usually, the questions that you have to answer on these proposals ask for information that will be useful for you as a company. So, just keep in mind that there are other benefits you can get from going through the application process, but getting the funding isn't a given. In fact, the vast majority of applicants don't get the funding.

I'll tell you at the end of my presentation, what our success rate was last year for help for the companies we helped.

It's also time sensitive. This is a big reason why we focus so much on information and getting information out to Scottish companies when funding is available because, typically, the calls are released and then you have 6 to 12 weeks to put together the proposal, apply, and then they're assessed. So, if you hear about funding too late, even if you have the perfect project, chances are you won't have the time to put together a winning proposal. So, this is why we try to gather information on different types of funding. We send out a funding bulletin. We have our funding database to try to match the right companies with the right funding at the right time. That is our goal.

The last thing is varied. So, most companies, when they think of public sector innovation funding of grants – there are grants available, of course, but more and more, we're seeing the direction of travel is towards different types of funding mechanisms like SBRIs, which are contracts, accelerators, which Innovate UK has been running quite frequently over the last year or two, which are a government grant, plus equity investment from a private partner. There's an innovation loans competition open now that I know Matt's going to talk about. So, there's lots of different ways to give companies this funding and we're seeing the public sector explore more and more of those different types of funding interventions.

OK, so, what kinds of companies should get in touch with us? Who are we going to actually be able to help get this competitive funding? Typically, we work with SMEs, although if you're a company based in Scotland get in touch, because, like I said, there's a lot of different teams within SE – if we can't help you, we usually know someone who can. We support companies who are in the Scottish Enterprise or South of Scotland Enterprise region. There is a similar service offered in Highlands and Islands Enterprise, and I have Fiona Paton, who is the contact there, I have her details on my last slide. So, if you're joining this webinar and you're from the Highlands and Islands region, you can get similar support. Everybody else, feel free to contact us at fiss@scotent.co.uk.

For those in the Highlands and Islands Enterprise region, Fiona Paton’s contact address is Fiona.Paton@hient.co.uk.

Then, as far as the project, we're looking for companies with projects that are market-oriented, where there's some sort of customer or market need that the technology has been developed in response to. So if you're developing technology that seems really interesting, and has all of these amazing features, it's probably not going to get funded unless there's a customer who is facing a purchasing decision on whether a product or service has those features. So we really want market-oriented innovation projects.

That said, I do have a note there that Scottish Enterprise has an innovation team, who can help advise and support, building the business case around new products or technology. And they have tools that you can use to look at customer engagement and building your market case, showing your addressable market, those kinds of things. So, again, there's a lot of support to offer, even if you're not quite ready to put together a funding proposal.

Usually, we work with companies whose project costs are over £50,000, where the project is new to the market, rather than something new to the company itself.

Another one that's key is we need to make sure that the company who's doing the project has the right to exploit the intellectual property, owns the IP, we have a team here at Scottish Enterprise who can help you with that if you don't have a solid case for your IP yet.

We want projects where there is some evidence of a market or customers willing to pay for the product or service you're developing. Again, we have a research team here who can help you gather evidence and validate maybe some of the assumptions you’ve made about your market. So get in touch with SE’s research team if you need some support there.

We also are looking for people at the right team to deliver the project. So companies who have the right management and technical team. A lot of the projects and a lot of the competitions are collaborative, so if you are looking for project partners, talk us, talk to the Enterprise Europe Network team here at Scottish Enterprise, the Knowledge Transfer Network – you'll hear from Matt – they can help you find the partners you need.

And the last thing is, you should be confident you'll be able to match fund at least 30% of project costs in cash. That's usually key.

OK, so if you're know an SME in Scotland with a good innovation project, get in touch. I mentioned our functional inbox that’s fiss@scotent.co.uk. I think my colleague Karen, is going to put the e-mail address into the into the chat, as well as our public website.

What we'll ask you to do is complete a funding questionnaire with some information on your project, as well as our terms and conditions. We’re public sector, so the support you get is free, but we do ask you to share your final proposal with us and your results that you get from the competition, because that's how we learn and that's how we better advise companies the future.

OK, so if we review your funding questionnaire and it looks like a good match for external funding, then we'll set up a discussion with one of the specialists on our team to talk to you about your different options., what of funding streams are open at the moment that fit your projects and then establish timescales for proposal reviews.

We also have a number of toolkits we've developed. We've had some webinars over the last year going through those toolkits – we have a great one for Innovate UK Smart, and we'll share those with you at that point. And then it's up to you to go back and write your proposal. We don't offer a proposal writing service. That's something that companies do themselves, but we do offer a lot of time to give you feedback on your proposal once it's written. So we'll have a team, not just from within FISS, but across SE – colleagues who are involved in your sector, or who maybe have knowledge of the funding stream you're applying to – we'll get them to look at your proposal and give you feedback. The earlier that you get your proposal to us before the call deadline, the more feedback we'll be able to give you. So for some companies, we do multiple rounds of review and a feedback session meeting. If you send it to us, you know, under three weeks before the proposal deadline, then it's probably just going to be one review and it might not be as in-depth, depending on our availability. Right now, for example, we've got the Innovate UK Smart deadline coming up the 26th of May, so we're quite busy at the moment.

Then you submit the proposal to the funder on time – Mat always has a good slide about this – but it's really important you get it done on time. A lot of people kind of wait till the last minute and have issues there, so I do want to emphasise that. Then more and more we're seeing competitions have a pitching portion to them, where once your written proposal is approved, you're invited back for an interview or pitch. And one of the most fun things we do is pitch prep with applicants, although not as fun now that it's all online and we can't bring in catering, but still a good time.

OK, this is just to show you that our questionnaire is not very burdensome. You should be able to fill it out easily, and it's just information to make our structured discussion with you more valuable.

So as I said, we're going to quickly go through a selection of open calls. The first two are the ones that I think are of the most interest to companies, at least so far, that we've been working with.

The first one is the Innovate UK Smart that I mentioned, that closes on the 26th of May, but it is a call that has been continuously open. So we expect that to open up again as soon as the current call closes. And this is for disruptive innovation projects with a large market. It can be at any stage of development. You can apply as an SME or as a consortium. It's a grant and you can get between 25 and 70% of your eligible costs covered, depending on the company size and how close to market your project is.

The EOC accelerator again for disruptive innovation. These projects should be a little nearer to market. So you have to be at technology readiness level five, which means you have a prototype and you've done some testing with it. Hopefully in a relevant environment, or in the field environment, and hopefully you have some early feedback that's positive on its performance. This is also a grant and there’s a 70% intervention rate. This is up to €2.5 million and it's only for single company applicants. If this is of interest, get in touch as soon as possible. There's now a two-stage application process. So the first stage application is quite simple, it's a, five page application, a three minute video, and a slide deck that you send in, and you have to get through that barrier to be able to do the full application later on. So even though there's a deadline, the 6th of October, it might sound far away, but we want to have as much time to work on that second in-depth application. So you'll want to get through the first hurdle as early as possible. So one to talk to us about especially if you're a digital health or low carbon company. So if you have some kind of digital health project, or environmental technology, they have special budgets for projects in those areas. Otherwise, it's open to companies from all sectors, but you're competing with everybody if you're in the open call, whereas there are specific competitions for digital health and low carbon this year

Then Eurostars, I have up on there. That's a good one just to know about, because it's, again, one that usually is open. We're expecting the next deadline sometime in autumn 2021. There's usually two deadlines a year. This is up to €360,000, a 60% intervention rate, but it requires a partner from another participating country. So if you're already working with someone in Europe to develop a new technology – it doesn't have to be disruptive in this case, it could be incremental – or eurostars participating country, there is some outside of Europe, this is a good one to know about. Because you could get some of the costs covered if you're doing some technology development with a partner in Europe, anyway.

So that's a quick gallop through some of our most popular open calls. And just waiting for the slide to change, Jonny, not sure if you can change it for me, maybe.

Yeah, I did want to mention that we do have a database with lots of different funding opportunities. You can see there's 241 live ones. I think I took this screenshot yesterday. And we also have a funding bulletin where we include all of the open innovation funding calls that we're aware of. So get in touch with us and we can add you to the list of our funding bulletin, and share the link of our database.

You can now access the funding database Camille refers to on our website.

OK, so should you work with us? Well, our performance for 2020, we had 115 companies that we've worked with, who ended up submitting to external funders. Out of those 22 are funded. They received funding of about 4.8 million, and we had a 19% success rate, which is better than the usual 2 - 5% success rate for most of the competitions we are helping with. But you can see, it's still quite competitive, and if you're going to go for this funding, you should know that it's not a definite win.

OK, that's it for me. I have some of the links and resources there, as promised. And definitely get in touch with us at our inbox. And that's it for me. I guess we'll do questions at the end, so I'm going to pass you on to our friend Mat Wasley.

And, yeah, go ahead, Mat.

Hello everybody, I'm Mat, I’m from KTM, I'm going to look at specifically Innovate UK competitions, some of the sort of mechanics of applying and a few tips in there, as well.

So Camille's put up some calls. This is what the overall portfolio of what Innovate funds looks like roughly speaking. So Innovate funds challenge-lead innovation. And that's the core of what Innovate UK does.

We're seeing the industrial strategy challenge fund as a brand move into the back a bit. But challenge-led innovation is here to stay and a lot of the industrial strategy stuff is still running, such as driving electric revolution and manufacturing made smarter.

There's a responsive mode element, Smart grants, as Camille's just mentioned. Also, there are business growth – well it says on the slide ‘Pilot’, but now we're past the pilot for innovation loans, and that's just opened, and I've got a slide on that. And Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, we've got slide on that as well.

And Innovate also run innovation-type competitions and activities for other government departments. And that would include things like the Small Business Research Initiative, SPRI, Procurement, and for the Department for Culture Media and Sport, the CyberASAP program, which is taking university cybersecurity projects into sort of minimum viable product. So there's quite a lot out there and different proportions varies as you go on.

So, Innovation Loans has just appeared and unfortunately this has not been hugely well publicised, I think because of the election. So there's a sort of blanket blackout on publicity around that, so this has kind of crept up on some people. But there was a really successful pilot running over the last few years with companies – in Scotland, UnikLasers for example, and there are other companies. I did the briefing tour on this and seeing exactly – companies can really benefit from this, and think of loans, the Innovation Loans, as another tool in your bank, and grants as well. So, that opened on 26^th April, it closes on the 2^nd June. There's a briefing event, which there now a link on the Innovate UK website for that briefing event, but there wasn't at the time at this slide.

Smart funding, Camille's just talked about that, so I won't dwell on that overly.

And KTP, so, you know, we've had all kinds of different flavour of government over the last 40 years and different priorities, but KTP has remained the constant through all time, and that’s because it's a successful scheme – so you have a university, a business and recent graduate forming this three-way partnership, and it's really worth considering that, particularly if you're doing business-university collaboration.

More recently the MKTP, the Management Knowledge Transfer Partnerships. And that's around increasing effectiveness and improving results through better management practices – so kind of management consulting, if you like. I'll draw your attention to that, because there's a lot of funding for management KTPs at the moment. So if that's some sort of business thing that you could take advantage of, then definitely look into that.

So, where do you start? Although it says here ‘search for a competition’, your best bet in terms of finding competitions, as Camille said, is to sign up to the FISS newsletter and look through that. KTN, I’ll put a link up at the end of my talk. We run a lot of newsletters where we will try and give you advance notice where we can. And there's lots of other ways, and Innovate UK also run their own competition.  

But if you go on the Innovation Funding service, there’s a link there, you’ll see all the open competitions, and all the details you need to apply will be contained on that as well. So, included in the details is the date – when it opens, when it closes. I emphasise this continually through it – if it closes at 11 o'clock in the morning, it doesn't mean 11.01. That is the date that it closes. But the applicant briefing, it's really important that you watch that. So, they’re all online, they always were online even when we did real-time event. They’ll be live streamed as well, and if you can make the live briefing, do that, because you’ll be able to ask questions. And so, if you go to the briefing, you will see who from Innovative is responsible for it, and you'll be able to ask some questions and find out some of the nuances of the competition.

If you've not applied for a competition from Innovate before, you can create an account on the site if you’re a business. It's very easy to do, just search for your business and then you can enter the details. Universities and research organisations should enter their details manually. And then you start to fill in your application. It will ask you some basic details, so who's the application team who you’re working with, the title, timescales, innovation area, research category – Camille mentioned the different interventions you get for different sets of technology readiness, so that's where that comes in. 

New in here is an inequality, diversity and inclusion survey. The reason for that is there’s a big government priority, big Innovate UK priority, to fund a more diverse range of businesses, and they can’t start to improve that and tackle that until they know more about who's applying for their competitions and how they’re getting on. So it’s really important that you complete that.

Project summary, you say what the project’s about. And that’s used in part to assign the assessors to it. Some of the big competitions, where there’s huge demand, there’s actually AI machine learning that goes into it to do that. So make sure your summary is clear.

And the public description, which is a different thing, you don't put anything confidential in there. If your project is funded, it will be publicly available. And that means investors, for example, could look you up on company databases, or customers could look at your projects. So use it as a promotional tool.

And scope, and that’s probably my number one thing, almost even ahead of deadline. If you don't meet the scope, walk away. Don’t try and fit a square peg into a round hole because all your effort on the project could be wasted if you're out of scope. It's gateway question.

So there are 10 questions in the application. I'm not going to go through them all in detail, because it would take the whole talk.  

Very briefly, question one is around the need or challenge. Why are you doing this? What’s the pain point? And then the approach and innovation is how are you technically going to do this? This is your first question where you can attach an appendix, you can put pictures in. Team and resources – think you’re the A team, you’re the only team that can do this. Why is it you, and who else do you need?

Market awareness – what does the market look like? You’re going to want to put some numbers in there for the market, segment it, and say – the next question – how you get to that market.

Then, in questions six, you're looking at the wider impacts. So how might this benefit the region, or national priorities, or the environment (which we'll come on to) for example, or other aspects. Project management – always bear in mind this is public money, so you've got to be able to run it properly, so show that you can run a good project. You have an appendix, so you can put a gantt chart in there.

Risks – again, technical risk is good, that’s what gets funded, the risk of losing all the money is not good. You've got a risk register you can attach, and you can talk about that.

Added value is about why can’t you just do this yourself, what extra benefit does the taxpayer get from helping you, investing in your project.

Cost and value for money are in Question 10. And there’s a non-scored question 11 around the location of the project partners.

So two new things in the last year have come in: climate change, a huge government policy driver and that’s flowed right into innovate. So climate change and environmental sustainability. You’re asked a few times in the application, any impacts or any positive benefits from the project. So for example, meeting government net zero targets. With this, don't ignore it. If there’s a negative impact, say how are you going to mitigate against it and bring any positive impact? And always look for evidence. Look for resources and strategies you can link to.

I mentioned diversity and inclusion before. The first part was the survey, and then it flows now through the application. It asks you at multiple points in the application about diversity inclusion. So, for example, with the team and resources, how diverse is your team? If you lack part of the team, if part of the project is going to recruit, for example, then how will you ensure that you do that in an inclusive way? Whatever you do, don't ignore this. It comes up multiple times. If you don't have a good answer, then go and work out why you don't. And actually, it is going to help your project be more innovative: there's plenty of data about diverse teams working better and being more innovative, so it’ll help your project in any case.

There's a finance section after that. It’ll make some checks on your finance. If you have any questions and you don’t feel competent to actually answer them, then get professional help, get an accountant. If you get this wrong, it could lead to your application being rejected. Make sure everybody's signed off their finances as well – so if you've got partners, chase to do that well before time.

So, you're about to hit submit, so is it good enough and are you ready to go? Have you double checked eligibility, you know, are you really, really in scope? Is this the right competition for you? Have you answered every last point in the guidance? It gives you detailed bullet points about what it wants. For example, in one of the questions, it’ll ask you, what's the current state-of-the-art? If you don't say what the current state-of-the-art is, you will lose marks. So, tick everything off.  Have you given every question equal attention? They’re all worth the same marks, 10 questions worth 10 marks each. So, don't focus entirely on project management and ignore the need question, for example.

Have you reached the word count? And that's not filling it in with flannel, that's being concise, but you should really be right up against that word count to be able to get enough information in to convince the assessor that you've got a good project here. We talk a lot about compelling narrative, so you told this great story, convincing story throughout the project, and you're going to need to reach that word count comfortably to do that. 

And will you score highly enough? So we should mention this I think. The pass mark, for the November smart call, I think the lowest project scored 83%. So that means you're going need to score, eight out of ten, a lot of 8s in your questions, some 9s and some 10s. Ideally no 7s or below.  

And a word about eligibility, out of 1,500 applications in the November smart call, 202 were ineligible. So if you want to give yourself a good chance, just make sure that you're not ineligible. And I've got some data around this. So the actual bar chart part of it is a bit older, it’s from the open competition. But I'm horrified, frankly, by that green bar, so the project costs were too high. If it says maximum £250,000, don’t ask for £250,001.

Double check as well, that your finance form matches your costs form. So these applications were disregarded because they’d asked for the wrong amount of money for the competition. And the other big bar, is it’s not collaborative. So don’t try and pass subcontractors off as partners, or, alternatively, don't have partners that should be subcontractors.

Don't leave it too late. It's wonderful, wonderful graph, this. This graph shows the submissions in the time going up to the deadline of the competition. And this bar is the last two hours and everybody's submitting in the last two hours. So I'll tell you all not to submit at the last minute and most of you will do anyway. You're much more likely to make a mistake on the finances and be ruled out if you rushed it at the last minute. You know, your computer can reboot – mine generally likes to reboot in the middle of Zoom calls, for example – the internet could go down. There’s all kinds of reasons not to submit in the last two hours before the call – not least because everyone else is trying to do it as well, so you might not even get through.

So you’ll get the results in. And I know Ulrike is going to be talking to you a bit about feedback, so I won't dwell on this, but just so that you know you will receive feedback for most of the Innovate competitions. Some of the Covid-related ones last year, they had so many applicants, they weren't able to provide that service. But you generally receive feedback. It seems to be the case more often than not, that of the five assessors, one will absolutely love your project when you see the feedback, and one will apparently hate it, and the other three will go “meh, it’s okay, I’ll give it a 7”. But actually, those three are what’s killing your projects, so you need to convince those three to give you 8s, 9s, 10s.

And the assessor that you thought hated your project – Innovative have some checks and balances to look out for assesses. It’s not like the ice skating, they won’t disregard the lowest mark or the highest mark. They’ll look for, does something seem a bit too low or a bit high in the assessor’s  mark. And they won’t rule that out, they’ll go and check with that assessor, what gave you that score. Because the assessor might have actually spotted the thing that none of the other assessors have seen. So, remember, you need to convince all five assessors, and particularly the ones that are in the middle.

So, just finishing off some top tips:

• Again, and again, make sure you fit the scope
• Make sure within your organisation, you're all agreed on how you’re going to go forward with the project, and you've agreed all the parts with any partners
• Be clear and concise
• Make a realistic plan for how you are going to do it
• Tell this compelling narrative to be convincing
• Remember risks, you need some technical risk, but you also need some innovation and to manage your risks
• Quantify and justify your assertions
• Definitely don't submit it even one second past the deadline. Make sure you know when the deadline is and leave plenty of time to get advice and feedback. We can do that to some extent at KTN, and Camille has just told you about the services available for Scottish businesses through FISS
• And don't leave it too late.

So, overall, write a proposal that excitement inspires, make the assessors interested to read it.

At KTN, we're around for sort of connections and helping. We run tonnes and tonnes of events, and activities, and promotions, and things like that. And we can help with building networks and making connections, whether for funding, or whether for finance, or whether it’s just sort of commercial collaborations. So, there's some links there, you’ll get these slides so no need to write it all down. We publish funding opportunities newsletters, we run a good application guide, and useful design to manufacture resources and a sign up for our comms.

So that's my last slide. So, I'll finish there and I'm going to hand over to Ulrike now to talk to us.

Thank you, Mat, thank you. Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for sticking around for my short presentation. So my name is Ulrike Knies-Bamforth and I'm one of Camille's colleagues, and when we put this webinar together, we thought it might be interesting for you to hear, to understand the perspective of an assessor. So I work as an assessor in my free time for Innovate UK and the European Commission, and I'm going to provide you with some of the things that you may not know and that are unique to assessors perspective.

OK, so I don't want to dwell on this, but Camille and Mat said already that getting other people's money is a competitive undertaking, and so my purpose is to just walk you through some of the things you can do to get above the magic 80% threshold and get your funding secured.

So the typical assessor. It's important to understand that the typical assessor is an expert in a subject area. So I, for example, I assess life sciences projects, mostly medical technologies projects. But the assessors are not always specialist in the subject matter that they're assessing. They can't be, you know, there are just not enough to go around. They assess in the personal function and not as a representative of their employer, so they're being selected for their knowledge and their expertise. There are different motivations for assessing, and we’ll come back to that later. Some people really just do it to earn money. It’s part of their part of their daily lives, and assessing is an important income stream. Others, such as me, we just want to keep in touch with technological progress.

According to Innovate UK, the role of the assessor is to help innovate UK select the best proposals and to help companies refine their proposition. That is the feedback that Mat was just talking about.

So, the Innovate UK assessment process. I'm focusing today on giving you a background on Innovate UK Smart, which is a very, very popular funding stream, and loads of companies will go for this. So this is the main thrust of my presentation today, but a lot of what I'm saying is actually a universal truth. So, in particular, Innovate UK, all assessors have to sign a contractual agreement which covers confidentiality, declarations of interests, and conflicts of interest. So, really, you shouldn't need to worry about the fact that there might be people with a conflict of interests. This roots out as much as possible, that there can't be a conflict of interests. And confidentiality is absolutely assured.

The assessors are selected by mostly by the lead technologist on the competition, based on their knowledge, skills, experience, and the requirements. There could be particular requirements of a funding competition.

For every assessor, it's not just that one day you get sent some proposals. It's compulsory to attend an online training session that provides information on the idea behind the funding calls and instructions for scoring. So every assessor, if you don't take part in this, you can't assess.

And the application process is strictly confidential. So the names of assessors, are never released, not even under freedom of information. And assessors are under strict instructions, not to reveal their identity, for example, we’re discouraged from looking up companies and particularly LinkedIn where you can be traced back, basically. So it's not encouraged and not desired to be doing much research around a proposal.

The assessment process, the one stage process, so I'm not going into detail about the pitching that Camille was alluding to earlier. So after the closing date for the submission has lapsed, applications are forwarded or streamed into the different assessors, depending on, as I said, their expertise. And what Innovate UK wants to achieve is assessment by up to five assessors. So it's a lot of feedback from five assessors. And all assessors a score against the same set of criteria, and they would have all undertaken the same amount of training as well.

And I would like to stress that the criteria for scoring by innovative UK are by and large, reflected in the bullet points, in the ‘How to Apply’ tab in each funding call. So there is a ‘How To Apply’ tab, which is very easy to find, and there are bullet points for each question, areas that you need to cover in your answer. And these are basically the foundations for the scoring criteria. So if you work, if you make sure you answer them all, this is basically already looking good for you.

The assessors then score and provide feedback on each question of the proposal. And again, the feedback is important to help you improve, should you not be successful. Assessors are asked to make a recommendation. So when all the scores are given, then basically one separate piece of information that is requested of you is, ‘do you think this proposal is suitable for funding or not?’.

Then, a report is compiled, and Mat showed you a very nice schematic of this reporting from all the five assessors. And once the noise is taken out of the results, the proposals are ranked in order. Then, once the winners are picked, the comments provided by the assessors are noted on the score sheets, and they are the official feedback provided to you at the end of the process.

From an access point of view, there are few things maybe that would be interesting to understand, or just to get yourself into the mindset of an assessor. So Innovate UK’s call schedule isn't always clear. So you may have looked on the Innovate UK website for funding calls – one day they’re there, sometimes they disappear, then other times they appear again. So even at the best of times, it's not always clear what the plan is going forward, or this is not necessarily communicated. So if you do this for a living, it can be quite stressful, I imagine. Because there can be periods with few calls – there can be sort of droughts – and sometimes there are many calls in a short space of time. And if you rely on this to earn a living, you obviously take on quite a lot.

Turnaround times vary, too. Sometimes, there's a lot of notice. Recently, with Covid, there were loads of funding calls, really with fast, fast turnaround times. So timelines can be tight, and that really impacts on the assessments.

And for the assessors, that means that sometimes he or she needs to process large numbers of applications in a short space of time. And they are paid with a flat rate, this means that your proposal may not get the attention you think it deserves, and again – what Mat also said, I want to really run this home – information in the proposal, therefore, needs to be easily digestible, and immediately apparent. Assessors often don't have time to spend a long time on a proposal. Payment is flat rate, and there are another 10 that need to be done in the next few days. So it really matters to write clear and concise.

Some quick word about practicalities. So, again, I want to say that it's important, if you're in doubt regarding your eligibility criteria, do contact the Innovate UK helpline or the KTN, and get their guidance in writing, because sometimes assessors pick something up that has been cleared with Innovate UK ahead of time. And if you have, for example, a green light – say, a subcontractor is located in a foreign country, sometimes this is the way for a very specialist undertaking, but generally, this is not within the eligibility criteria. But in a special situation, this may be fine. But do get this in writing.

Innovate UK as well, it's a bit curious, but Innovate UK really prefers assessors to work off the screen. So it’s only recently was actually a print-out button introduced in the assessment. So usually, assessors are not encouraged, actually are actively discouraged to print the proposals out. So this means for you as the individual writing the assessment, that the information needs to be there on the page where it belongs. It's very rare assessors will be hunting around for the piece of information – say that in the second question 4 you were supposed to be talking about the market size, and actually, you mentioned the market size in the summary. It will be scored as if it’s not there by most assessors, unless they are very, very generous with their time. So make sure that the information is located where it's asked for.

There’s also something about first impressions, definitely. Just imagine you are an assessor and you have so, so many applications to score. Once we've accepted a proposal, which is only you want to see the full proposal, it's only possible after you've accepted it based on the summary. And you can then click onto the first page, and you see there are no attachments. That's already not only a lost opportunity for you, but it really, really reflects badly. So, when I see a proposal that doesn't have any attachments or just one out of, say, four possible ones, I'm sort of happy inside because I know it's going to be easy because it's just going to be bad. So it's really, really, it's like that.

As well for Innovate UK smart, there is a public description that is requested where you should be talking or expressing, you’re describing your project in layman's terms, and some companies just copy and paste from the summary. Again, other instances of repetition where there is copied and pasted, maybe from the summary into question one or something, really, really reflects badly on the proposal. It doesn't look good on the team.

Or, you just – and Mat stressed this already – your answers are short or you don't really exhaust the word count that you have, it just doesn't look good. Really doesn't look good.

And some further do's and don'ts. So, a lot of the times, for example, it's the language that you use. So it needs to be really precise, particularly, in the technological subjects. So for example, don't say “we believe that this will lead to big savings for our customers or big savings for the NHS”. It doesn’t mean a lot really, it’s not convincing. What you should say instead is, “tests with our lead customer in a pilot project showed 25% cost savings over the existing standard, and we will validate this with three more potential customers representative of our target market in work package 3”. So be very precise, what you've already got as a result, and what are you going to do. Precise language is very, very important. 

The next thing, I read this so many times – “there really isn't competition”, “there are no competitors, because our technology is just so great”. It's not credible, it really isn't. There is always a current state-of-the-art or a current best practice. And do provide then, make sure you emphasise your advantages compared to the current standard.

Lastly, don't say, “Oh, well, it's widely known that there is a problem”. Again, use specific language and state, a clear problem by citing stats, data. Use really good and sharp language.

There are some universal truths of proposal writing, which I have sort of gleaned over the years. So first of all – and I was laughing to myself when Mat said it – is it is really like that, proposal writing takes longer than you think. It’s not only not submitting in the last two hours until the close of the deadline, but it really matters regarding the quality of your proposal. Start early, and allow plenty of time, really. I can't stress this enough.

Secondly, and again, I'm reiterating what Matt said, a proposal needs to match the funding call. Last year, there were a lot of funding calls that tried to address our challenge with Covid. If your technology wasn't about Covid, don't try and make it about Covid, because it's just not going to fly. Really make sure your proposal is matched to the funding call. And for this, for example, these webinars that explain a little bit more about the funding calls and what the funding body looks for are really, really important to attendees.

The third universal truth is a well-written proposal with little innovative merit is, by and large, more likely to get funded than a badly written proposal that is highly innovative. So language, easy digestible information, and immediately apparent information really, really is important. So, back to point one, do allow enough time.

And for grant writing, consultants are, unfortunately, no magic bullet for success. We have supported companies that have chosen to go with external consultants and their success rates were not a lot better. So, again, allow time. Use the ‘how to apply’ instructions if you're going for Innovate UK funding and come to FISS and get the help you can.

Another quick thing, a word about feedback. So, Mat already said, feedback is a gift and Innovate UK, by and large, is really good about relaying all the information that they receive from the assessors. Not every funding body does it. So wherever you apply, make sure that you receive full feedback on your application from the funders.

Read it carefully. Feedback can contain comments, criticisms, and suggestions, and often reviewers do not agree with each other. So, like in this Rorschach test that I was sort of having on this little picture down there, it really is, two assessors will see the same proposal and they can have completely opposing views on this. So don't be disheartened but try to look at it, and try to really understand and get under the skin of what the assessors may mean. So avoid taking the feedback personally, but be candid in appraising the strengths and the weaknesses of your proposal.

And again, come to FISS, we are there and try to translate sometimes what the feedback may actually mean. And we've done this on a number of occasions. And if you decide to resubmit maybe to the same grant, it's almost back to square one. Say you scored 80% in your first attempt. You can't rely that with a bit of tweaking that you get past the, say, 84% mark. So, because it could be the cards are newly shuffled, you may not get the same assessors. Although innovate UK, I think will try, but that's not always possible. So it's almost always a fresh start. So make sure you give it, even the second time, give it your very, very best shot.

And that was it for me. So do get in touch, and good luck with it all. And I would like to hand back now to Jonny for the question and answers. Thank you.

Thanks, Ulrike. And hi, everyone, it's Jonny here. And I do realise we are running slightly over on time, so my apologies. If some of you have to leave us, then no problem. We are indeed recording, so maybe you can catch up later.

But if the rest of our speakers are happy just to stay on for another 10 minutes or so, just to at least take some of your questions, and the rest we can maybe follow up with.

So at this point, I'll just invite our speakers back up – Camille, Mat, and Ulrike – just back onto webcam if they wish, and we'll just get through some of the questions. So I'll ask for your answers to be quick and succinct if possible, and we'll just try and get through at least a couple of the questions. 

Caroline says: is there a limit to how many times you can apply for this type of funding?

Camille: Yes. Usually, there is some sort of limit on the number of times you can apply. So, for Innovate UK, I think it's two times generally and EIC accelerator, they’re also putting in limitations. So it usually varies by call, but usually you have one chance to resubmit and then that's it.

Jonny: Perfect. Thanks for that. Eva, and Angela, both asking if we share the slides. The simple answer is yes, yes we will. So they will come around in an e-mail to you, so fear not. A question here from David who says: regarding the EIC accelerator, those who pass the first stage, what is the success rate for the second stage?

Is that something we’d have to hand, can we share that?

Camille: Yeah, so this is actually a new kind of round of EIC accelerator under Horizon Europe. So I can tell you what the success rate was under Horizon 2020. It was usually about 2% to 6% overall for EIC Accelerator, but there never was a two stage application process in the past. It was just, you went straight in with a 30 page proposal. So, hopefully, you'll be closer in the 6 to 10% of people who are asked to come back to the stage two. I mean, it could be even greater than that, it depends on how many applicants there are and how many good applicants there are in your cutoff date.

Jonny: Perfect. Thanks for that, Camille.

Mat, Ulrike, if there's anything you want to chip in on then please feel free. The next one I've got here from Richard, he says: our company thought about EIC, but is EIC likely to be successful given Brexit? We are a tech startup in the low carbon sector.

Camille: So the UK has committed to fund Horizon Europe, so you can participate in Horizon Europe the same way you did in Horizon 2020 – we've essentially paid into it. So UK companies will be just as likely to succeed as they ever were and if you look on our Scotland Europe website, they have a lot of information on UK participation in Horizon Europe to maybe make you feel a little more confident in applying.

Mat: I think it's also worth saying that because the UK is paid in to this, and it was a big financial commitment, it probably means that there might have been other things on the outside, other additional funding that might have, that is not now going to happen. So there’s Innovate call work and there’s Horizon Europe, we have paid into it, so we should make use of it.

Jonny: OK, thanks, Mat, and thanks Camille. One here from Jock which other people might be thinking, as well, just around any assistance in applying for some of this funding. So Jock say: I'm an inventor that’s eligible for the majority of funding options, is there any assistance in applying? I’m great at problem solving, but not that good at paperwork.

Any words of advice for Jock?

Ulrike: Yeah, do come to FISS – that’s the purpose of this webinar. So we're very happy to have a look at, not only a sort of a pre-prepared application, but we're also happy to have a chat with you about what you want to achieve, how you want to commercialise your invention, and maybe help you shape the best project or a project, and then look for funding opportunities for this project and how you can drive development of your innovation further. So, we are actually able to, well Scottish enterprise is able to, offer sort of wraparound support even beyond looking at applications. Camille, do you want to add anything to that?

Camille: I would say, we can't write your proposal for you. If you're a single person applying, it's one of those situations where you have to be able to show that if you get the funding, you have the team in place to use it and to grow as a business. So there is some maybe earlier stage work that you could do with your local Business Gateway or with some of the other teams here at Scottish Enterprise to kind of build up your capacity before you go in and apply for this funding. So, yeah, I think it's a smart question, because you're saying you're eligible for it, but you've recognised that you need some help, and maybe bringing some more people on your team before you're ready to apply for it. But get in touch. There's no reason not to get in touch and we’ll help point you in the right direction.

Jonny: Super. Thanks, folks. And to Jock and anyone else maybe in that position looking for some help, you'll find the email address for the team in the chat. But likewise, you can respond to the follow-up email that we’ll be sending around after the session in the next day or two. Just in the interest of time, we'll just take 1 or 2 more questions before we wrap up. I know a lot of people have had to leave us, so hopefully they'll be able to catch up on the bits that they missed on the watch back. One here from Christine, who says: if you've received a Smart grant, can you then go on and apply for EIC Accelerator?

Camille: Yes. So EIC Accelerator is run by European Commission, so it's different funding. And it's not even state aid funding, which is why you can get a 70% intervention rate for a late-stage work. So, absolutely, and if you have done Innovate UK Smart successfully, then that's really good, it de-risks your project in the eyes of the assessors, because someone else thought it was good first.

Jonny: OK, one more question we’ll take from Adrian, which is a little bit more case specific, but maybe we can provide an easy answer – or maybe not, I say that with a pinch of salt. So Adrian says: we are a green biorefinery company registered in England and Wales with a small pilot plant in England. We want to build our first revenue-generating plant in central Scotland and base our operations and commercial team there, creating a Scottish-operating subsidy, as most of our customers will be in Scotland. Can we use FISS, or are we excluded?

Camille: Can you repeat the beginning of that again Jonny? Where are they based now?

Jonny: So, at the moment, registered in England and Wales with a small pilot plant in England but want to build their first revenue-generating plant in central Scotland and base it operations and commercial team from there because most of their customers will be in Scotland.

Camille: OK, so I would say since you’re registered in England at the moment, we actually are part of the Enterprise Europe network, and you have a local office there. They’re called Innovate UK Edge in England. So you can get in touch with our colleagues there, and then as soon as you move to Scotland we’ll be able to take over from them, we always work closely together. So it's Innovate UK Edge – if you Google that you'll be able to find your local office, or email us, and we can put you in touch directly. And then as soon as you move to Scotland, yes, absolutely, we can work with you. And they offer similar support as well.

Jonny: Hope that helps, Adrian. Jock from the earlier question about some support in applying has replied, and said: Thanks, I'm looking at building a team of people to help as well. 

So that's super, glad to hear it Jock. OK, just in the interest of time then, we have run over slightly. I think we'll call it a day, on the session today. I just wanted to say a quick thank you to all of our audience for joining us today and getting involved. I hope you enjoyed the presentations and discussions, and many thanks for the questions that you've been submitting. And thanks to Mat, Camille and Ulrike as well. And I hope you enjoyed their presentations – many thanks for your insights, folks. And you'll find more upcoming webinars on our website.

And please look out for the follow-up email that we’ll be sending around with the slide decks, and, of course, the link to rewatch today's session. And the meantime, if there's anything else we can do to help them, please look into the chat box and you'll find the e-mail address fiss@scotent.co.uk, and reach out to the team. We’ll be happy to help you. Hopefully, you can join us for another webinar very soon, but until then, stay safe, and we’ll maybe see you in a future session. Thank you. Bye, bye.