How Will Grant Funding Benefit My Business? The Stats You Need to Know.
This Halloween night, the Business Funding Show, in association with Granted Consultancy, Stephens Scown and Innovate UK, will hold a workshop on a topic that chills many entrepreneurs to the bone: grant-funding applications! But don’t be afraid — Granted Consultancy is here with some stats to ease your fears.
At Granted Consultancy, the majority of the businesses we work with are start-ups and SMEs. Why are they working with us, apart from the obvious financial incentive that grant funding offers? Recent research has shown that UK R&D grants and funding from bodies like Innovate UK boost turnover and employment, especially for innovation-led small businesses.
Led by Professor Stephen Roper, director of the Enterprise Research Centre, the national study carried out a detailed analysis tracking 15,000 tech firms which received government R&D grants. The analysis found that R&D grants led to a total revenue of £43 billion between 2004 and 2016 (more than five times the £8 billion invested) and created around 150,000 jobs.
The findings also showed that, on average, these firms employed 23% more people after six years compared with firms that did not receive grants. Turnover grew by 28% and productivity by 6% over the same period.
However, the growth was significantly higher among businesses of fewer than 50 employees, suggesting that the government’s policy of subsidising promising industrial research — ‘picking winners’ — should not just concentrate on backing well-established national firms but rather seek to fund smaller, innovative businesses.
According to Professor Roper, “This is the largest and most detailed study yet of the impact public funding for science and innovation has on growth at the firm level.
“It shows very clearly that grants to support R&D have a positive impact, creating jobs and fuelling growth in the high-tech, high value-added sectors that the UK must encourage to remain competitive on the world stage.
“It’s well established that innovation grants can help with commercialising new technology by providing firms with additional financial slack to undertake riskier research activity.
“We should be looking to the next generation — small, promising, up-and-coming businesses that have the potential to scale up.”
Never be scared of grant applications again! Learn more about grant funding opportunities and how they can benefit your business at the upcoming event “Boo! Don’t be Scared of Grant Funding Applications” on 31st October at WeWork Chancery Lane, London.
Tickets here: http://bit.ly/2xjZLFw
