Once we get the nod from our KTA that our project can move to full application stage, the project team will agree which of the KTP submissions deadline they are aiming for. These are very regular throughout the year, usually 8-10 weeks apart.
Whilst at first glance the application form can appear daunting, once it has been broken down into sections the tasks involved are much less scary.
Your KTP contact in the University will be the one who submits the application and they will take the lead in making sure that all the information required is gathered together. First thing they will do is register a new application on the Innovation Funding Service portal (IFS) and invite partners to join the application. As a bit of a control freak about version control I would suggest to partners that they don’t put anything directly onto the portal themselves, but work offline (or on a shared platform such as Google or One Drive) to complete the application.
Each application window there are usually some tweaks to the application form so it is worthwhile going through the application on the portal and make sure the team is using the most up-to-date version.
There’s lots of standard information required in the application form such as names and addresses and SIC codes. This is fairly simple to complete.
The first section of the application is a project summary, a public description and a section where the team explains why this project is in scope as a KTP. I usually encourage the team to leave these sections until later on as this content can be picked out of the responses to the main questions.
The main personnel delivering the project are identified (senior business employee, company supervisor, academic supervisor and lead) and the reasoning behind why they are the right people to work on the project are defined.
We then move on to explaining the business context and how the KTP fits and adds to the strategy the business has, as well as how the project will be funded and what expertise and knowledge is required by the business to deliver this project.
A critical section is the business case – this is where most applications fail or succeed. We need to demonstrate what the market opportunity is and how the business will deliver this market opportunity once the outcomes and outputs of the project are clear. We are required to make specific commercial impact calculations, detailing a number of routes to market and how these will increase revenue or net profit for the business. There are standard approaches to how this needs to be set out so the experience of your university KTP contact is essential here.
KTPs are not just about commercial benefits though, we also need to specify additional environmental, socio-economic or employment benefits that will accrue from successful project delivery.
Next section is focused on the Associate themselves. In effect we are writing the beginnings of a Job Description – detailing how the Associate will be supervised, what the exact challenge will be, and what skills, experience and qualifications the ideal candidate will have to deliver the project.
Finally, we look at the project from an academic point of view and explain why the academic team want to get involved in the KTP and what the outcomes and benefits of their involvement are – we will look at what publishing or conference opportunities are there, as well as how the KTP could effect future work for the academics and any research groups they are part of.
The application is an iterative process that involves everyone in the project team, coordinated by the university KTP contact. My own preference is to allocate questions to different members of the team and gather responses in bullet point or narrative form, before writing the application using one voice, to ensure consistency and cohesiveness throughout. In my experience the more input from partners, the better the final submission.
The KTA then gets involved again. Every KTA is different – some will be very strict, insisting that they get a full draft of the application (and workplan – to be discussed in the next blog) at a certain point before the deadline for submission, some are more flexible and will be happy to review up to submission day. As you can imagine, the earlier we complete a draft the less stressful it is to make any changes suggested.
This is where the KTA becomes a (sometimes very) critical friend! It’s their job to make sure that when the application is submitted it has the greatest possible chance of success. Sometimes their suggestions are numerous, sometimes less so. These suggestions can also feel overwhelming after you’ve spent so long involved in the detail of the application, and it can feel that you’ll never be able to respond to their points. I tend to work through their comments in an orderly way, and the work involved usually turns out less than initially thought.
….. more iterations in the team then off to the KTA again for final (!) approval. The university KTP contact will transfer information from the offline form to the portal, make sure all sections are complete and all the financial information is correct.
Huge relief comes when the submit button is pressed………