Apply for Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) – Round 5

Participate in the Knowledge Transfer Partnership scheme which allows a UK registered business or not-for-profit organization to partner with a UK higher education. If interested, you can apply for this business grant. Check the Eligibility Criteria and other Details for more information.

Sponsoring Agency: GOV.UK 

Type of Fund: Competition

Deadline: February 2, 2022

Details:

The Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) scheme allows a UK registered business or not-for-profit organization (which refer to collectively as the ‘business partner’ from now on) to partner with a UK higher education (HE) or further education (FE) institution, RTO or Catapult (which refer to as the ‘knowledge base partner’).

This partnership brings new skills and the latest academic thinking into the business partner to deliver a specific, strategic innovation project. The knowledge base partner will recruit 1 or 2 graduates (known as ‘associates’) to work on the project.

Each application must be led by a knowledge base, working with a business partner. If you are from a knowledge base that has not yet developed a project, get started by reading the KTP guidance.

If you are from a business, contact the Innovate UK KTN.

Eligibility Criteria

This award is provided on a no subsidy basis. This means you must publish or make all project outputs openly available on a non-selective basis.

If you decide to commercially exploit project outputs, you can only do so with no selective advantage.

Each KTP is a partnership between the following:

• a UK knowledge base, acting as the lead organization and submitting the application
• a UK registered business or not-for-profit organization

Your project can last between 12 and 36 months, depending on the project requirements.

KTP does not support projects with public sector organizations.

Knowledge base partner –

The knowledge base partner cannot work alone.

The knowledge base partner must lead the project and must:

• be a UK registered higher education (HE) or further education (FE) institution, research technology organization (RTO), or Catapult
• invite one UK registered business of any size or not-for-profit organization into the Innovation Funding Service
• invite one knowledge transfer adviser
• not act in any way to gain selective commercial or economic advantage from the outputs of the project
• recruit associate roles in a demonstrably open and fair manner
• allow associates to carry out the majority of the project at the business partner’s premises
• provide academic support for the associate
• make sure the application is completed and submitted before the competition closes

Your business partner must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the knowledge base partner to collaborate on a project. When the business partner accepts their invitation, they will need to:

• login or create an account
• enter estimates of their own project costs, which may be updated as part of the final reporting process

Business Partner –

Business partners cannot work alone. They must develop the project with a knowledge base of their choice. It encourages business partners to approach knowledge bases directly.

To collaborate with the knowledge base, the business partner must:

• be the UK registered business of any size or a not-for-profit organization
• have more than 2 employees
• demonstrate its ability to financially support its contribution to the project
• accept an invitation from a knowledge base to participate in a project and complete their parts of the application form
• provide details of their financial accounts from the past 3 years
• provide supervisory support for the associate
• host the associate

The definition KTP uses for ‘not-for-profit organization’ includes social enterprises and charities.

For more information on company sizes, please refer to the company accounts guidance. This is a change from the EU definition unless you are applying under State aid.

Subcontractors –

Subcontractors are not allowed in this competition.

More Information 

The UK registered academic institutions, RTOs or Catapults can apply for a share of up to £8 million to fund innovation projects with businesses or not-for-profits.

For more information, visit here.