$20,000 Innovation Booster Grants now open

An ongoing state authorities program offering grants to startups and small companies to commercialise their concepts has opened for this yr. 

The Innovation Booster Grants (IBG) – beforehand often called the Innovation Voucher Program – gives recipients as much as $20,000 in monetary assist for skilled abilities and providers that enhance functionality and advance their actions – corresponding to constructing prototypes and maybe even getting a patent.

The assist have to be utilized in considered one of 4 classes; analysis and improvement, product improvement, know-how switch and mental property, and commercialisation assist providers.

Funded by means of the New Industries Fund (NIF), the IBG is a extremely aggressive grant – final yr noticed 21 companies receive grants, with 36 given out during 2020, with the deadline having been delayed because of the preliminary wave of Covid.

Recipients are required to make a 20% co-contribution plus GST. The announcement comes because the state authorities launched a new $100 million fund final week to encourage funding that diversifies the WA financial system.

The impediment between concept and commercialisation

It’s well-known that one of many main hurdles for startups is popping nice concepts right into a product that’s commercially viable – with many lurking across the Valley of Dying throughout this time. The state authorities says the IBG overcomes this impediment.

Earlier recipients embrace AMLab who acquired a $20,000 innovation voucher in 2019 to help within the improvement of an Mental Property (IP) technique for his or her autonomous ship-to-shore container cranes challenge that makes use of machine imaginative and prescient know-how.

Because of the grant, AMLab was capable of increase $1.3 million in funding. On high of this, their workforce doubled to 12 staff.

“These grants play an vital position within the commercialisation journey, from concept to commercialisation and are supported by the McGowan Authorities’s New Industries Fund (NIF),” stated Innovation and ICT Minister Stephen Dawson. 

“The McGowan Authorities’s $16.7 million New Industries Fund’s central function is to assist and speed up new and rising companies throughout all sectors and areas in WA.

I encourage all companies and start-ups to use for a grant and realise their immense potential in turning innovation into profitable enterprises that improve and develop the WA financial system.

Stephen Dawson, Innovation and ICT Minister

How do I apply for a grant?

Functions are now open, and shut at 11am on April 20, 2022.

This Wednesday, Morning Startup might be internet hosting a free Zoom occasion the place the brand new Division of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation (JTSI) Director of Innovation, Charlie Gunningham (that title rings a bell…), will focus on who’s eligible, how you can apply, and most critically how the panel – all exterior trade consultants – will decide purposes.