Innovation Integrator: Supporting the Businesses of Tomorrow

Its diagnostic Innovation Integrator® model is being used to support research commercialisation and develop entrepreneurship.

Working alongside North-East universities in the Northern Accelerator project, CPI will build on its long track-record of delivering large projects across the advanced manufacturing, life sciences, healthcare, digital and process sectors. 

CPI’s Innovation Integrator® allows businesses to validate and establish robust strategies by highlighting product, process and technology gaps that must be addressed to enable progression from invention to commercialisation.

The model helps to create a plan to de-risk and lower the cost of innovation, while building a company’s value and investor confidence by identifying potential barriers and bottlenecks to growth across 11 factors, such as assets, market need and intellectual property. 

“CPI is delighted to be part of the Northern Accelerator project, which will provide innovation services and develop people with a systematic approach to innovation who will create extra value for the UK and the North-East,” said Anand Pogul, CPI Digital & Innovation Manager.

The Northern Accelerator project, led by Durham University, is backed by £4.9m of Government support through the Connecting Capability Fund (CCF).

It will see Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria and Sunderland universities work together to make a step change in delivering research to the marketplace and to develop entrepreneurship among academics through an ideas impact hub and associated proof-of-concept support.

It will build on an existing collaboration between Durham and Newcastle universities, which has created a network of entrepreneurs and academics who are embedded in the universities’ spin-out companies. The scheme also aims to establish an ongoing North-East University Investment Fund to support research-based spin-outs in the region long after the CCF funding ends.

Roy Sandbach OBE, Chairman of the Northern Accelerator Strategic Advisory Board, said: ​“Our North-East universities do world-class research, not just for knowledge creation, but to deliver national and regional economic prosperity and employment.

“This project will be a game-changer for the North-East’s economy and a vital contribution to the delivery of the regional strategic economic plans.”

The CCF-funded Northern Accelerator project will run until March 31, 2021.