The Co-Innovate Programme facilitates a three way partnership between companies, academic institutes and project managers to deliver a 12 month research and innovation project.
Benefits for SMEs
- Chance to partner with academic institution to carry out a research and innovation project with 50% funding towards the salary of a Project Manager to deliver the 12 month project as well as 28 days of academic consutancy support.
Benefits for Project Managers
- Salary up to €40,000 co-funded up to 50% by Co-Innovate Programme.
- Travel and subsistence to achieve project rollout in association with the academic lead.
- Opportunity to work as Project Manager on a real-world project, receiving mentoring and engaging directly with Senior Management Team within the company and Academic Lead.
- Develop work experience, skills and personal development.
- Exposure to all departments of an SME and receive a holistic overview of the company.
The project manager job roles vary from business to business, but the focus is on supporting the main management team to create and develop innovative and commercially viable products and services. The job roles are for a twelve-month period but it is anticipated that on completion of the successful project there may be opportunities for full time employment within the company.
1000 Companies helped to date by Co-Innovate
986 companies have attended FREE innovation workshops across the eligible area of Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and Scotland to find out more about innovation support available through the Co-Innovate programme. In that time Co-Innovate has also run 684 individual business health checks and carried out 200 innovation assessments for small and medium size businesses. Nearly 60 businesses have also taken part in an intensive 10-day mentoring session which provides participants with specific action plans to help develop their innovation capability.
Neil says: 'We've seen remarkable success from participating businesses in the first two years of running the Co-Innovate project and are delighted that businesses are really seeing the benefits of our expertise.'
Interested?
Co-Innovate is a five-year €16.6 million project that aims to boost collaboration between small and medium enterprises across the border counties in Ireland, Northern Ireland and parts of western Scotland. Co-Innovate is a project supported by the European Union’s INTERREG VA Programme, managed by the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB).
