Knowledge Transfer Partnerships help growing businesses innovate by addressing strategic challenges and creating technological and business value. KTPs deliver competitive advantage, building skills and capabilities. Part-funded by Innovate UK, KTPs can help catapult your business forwards.
A KTP is a partnership between a UK business seeking expertise, a university expert and a recently qualified high-quality graduate. KTPs last between 12 and 36 months and are part-funded by a grant from Innovate UK. The amount businesses need to contribute is different for SMEs and larger companies.
The City KTP team and academics will support the business through all stages of the application and delivery processes. Collaboratively we will scope out the project, complete the application, recruit the Associate who will deliver the project, and the academic team will line manage the Associate to achieve project objectives.
These projects can be game changing and transformative for the business – each KTP, on average, delivers an increase in Net Profit to the business of £1,000,000 within 5-years post-project.
Benefits to business from KTPs
- KTPs are heavily subsidised - businesses receive a grant to cover up to 67% of project costs.
- High rate of success at application – up to 90% of submitted applications are funded (compared to many R&D grant opportunities this is hugely appealing!).
- Favourable terms for any IP generated within the partnership.
- Skills and expertise are embedded within the business so they can be exploited after the end of the project.
Core themes
KTPs can address multiple business challenges within any sector – City has experience of delivering KTPs across Computer Science, Engineering, Construction, and Psychology, as well as the skills to deliver Management KTPs focusing on high-level management strategy, business performance, productivity and growth through City’s world-class Bayes Business School.
KTPs must be:
- Innovative – capabilities must be new to the company (and ideally new to the market).
- Impactful – project must have commercial benefit to the company (delivering ROI and increasing Net Profit).
- Based on knowledge transfer – capabilities are transferred and add to company’s value (this is NOT consultancy).
- Challenging – for the Associate, the company AND the academic team involved.
Eligibility
There are some key criteria that need to be met for a business to be eligible for the KTP programme.
Businesses and not-for-profit organisations must:
- Be UK based and of sufficient size to support the project.
- Have the financial capacity to make the required contribution to the cost of running a KTP.
- Have a long-term view and see how a KTP could impact their business over the next 5-7 years.
Specifically, businesses should be able to demonstrate at least 3-years profitable trading through published accounts and have at least 5 employees to ensure that the knowledge generated through the project can be embedded and exploited once the project ends.
Contact details
Please get in touch to discuss your ideas for growing your business and one of our KTP team will be in touch within 5 working days.
KTP news and information
Learn more about the latest KTP news and information via our blog site, plus find answers to your questions with insights from businesses and academics on our KTPs.
Case studies
We know it is sometimes hard to see how funding opportunities and support programmes can work in practice and be applied to your business context, so please take some time to look at the case studies and news articles about KTP here:
