SME Dual Use Innovation

Description

The University is seeking a commercial partner or consortium of partners to deliver a six-month pilot project (October 2026 to March 2027) to support regional SMEs, deliver the first pilot cohort of businesses to be supported through the Muster Programme and help us to develop the Trials Tank limb of the programme.<br /><br />The pilot will be delivered as a set of parallel workstreams governed by a stage-gate process. From launch, the successful bidder will source and validate challenges while engaging and assessing the SME cohort. By 28th January 2027 the challenges must be established and the cohort narrowed into challenge clusters. An interim diagnostic review will be held by 11th December 2026 – approximately six weeks after launch – to confirm the challenge pipeline, the quality of the engaged cohort and what is realistically buildable, informing the stage gate. The stage gate will determine the focus and scale of the consortia and business-creation stretch objectives described below and will confirm the target volume of proofs of concept (Deliverable 3).<br />