SBRI - the Small Business Research Initiative

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SBRI, the Small Business Research Initiative, enables the public sector to tap into new ideas and technologies and speeds up their adoption. It helps government departments connect with innovative businesses to solve the tough challenges facing the public sector.

Innovative solutions

Watch the video to find out about SBRI, a new way to drive public sector innovation in Northern Ireland.

SBRI provides innovative solutions to challenges faced by the public sector, leading to better public services and improved efficiency and effectiveness. SBRI is the UK’s pre-commercial procurement programme. SBRI uses the procurement of research and development to support to creation of new products and solutions to address unmet needs.

It generates new business opportunities for companies, provides small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) a route to market for their ideas and bridges the seed funding gap experienced by many early stage companies. Funding is contract rather than grant and therefore can be up to 100 per cent of project costs, and the intellectual property developed in the competition belongs to the supplier.

SBRI has been used in Northern Ireland to help introduce new innovations in a range of areas including health, education, environment, business rates, audit and tourism.

SBRI was recognised as a leading programme for procurement in a Local Government Association report, ‘Encouraging innovation in local government procurement’. 

SBRI review and recommendations

Government’s review of SBRI into the barriers facing small businesses and recommendations on how to tackle them.

  1. Leveraging public procurement to grow the innovation economy - gov.uk website: Independent report
  2. Review: Evaluation of the Small Business Research Initiative: Research and analysis

Northern Ireland case studies

Smart School Transport

The video tells the story of an SBRI Northern Ireland initiative using live data to match the needs of complex school transportation requirements. It is part of the Northern Ireland SBRI initiative from Matrix NI and the Department for the Economy.

FAST: automated staff deployment

The video tells the story of an SBRI Northern Ireland initiative using live data to match the needs of patients with appropriate skilled pharmacy staff in real time. It is part of the Northern Ireland SBRI initiative from Matrix NI and the Department for the Economy.

More information

For more information please visit the Matrix website:

 

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