The challenges faced by the West of England’s small to medium-sized enterprises in scaling up to innovate and grow are to be tackled in project spearheaded by the University of Bath.
The initiative will focus on four key technology sectors – advanced engineering and manufacturing; digital innovation; environmental, sustainable, marine/maritime; and health and wellbeing. 
The University of Bath has secured a government award of £5m to lead the project in the South of England through the SETsquared partnership – which also includes the universities of Bristol, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey.
They will pool resources to facilitate new research collaborations with highly productive and fast-growing SMEs.
The funding is awarded from the Connecting Capability Fund (CCF) to support universities in working together and with external partners to commercialise research, helping to deliver the government’s Industrial Strategy.
In total, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has allocated £20m to five university partnerships across England.
SETsquared – which has its Bath base in the city’s Innovation Centre – has supported well over 1,000 hi-tech start-ups to develop and raise more than £1bn of investment since it was launched 25 years ago.
Two years ago it was named as the best incubator in the world by the University Business Incubator (UBI) Index .
Universities and science minister Jo Johnson, who announced the new funding this week, said: “The commercialisation of research and stronger working with business forms a key part of our Industrial Strategy, and through the Connecting Capability Fund we are strengthening collaborations between universities and with businesses to enable more ideas to become innovative solutions, boosting the UK economy.
“By building on our reputation as a pioneering nation, and investing an additional £4.7bn for research and development, we are making sure that the UK remains one of the best places in the world to innovate, do business and create jobs.”
University of Bath vice-chancellor Prof Dame Glynis Breakwell said the funding award provided a “tremendous opportunity to spread the benefits of university knowledge, skills and technology to enterprises and communities across the South of England”.
She added: “Together with our partner universities in SETsquared we have a strong track record of helping companies to innovate and grow and we look forward to the opportunities and challenges this will open to researchers.”
The university’s director of research & innovation services Dr Jon Hunt, at the University of Bath, said the project aligned the different research strengths of the SETsquared universities with the combined power of our enterprise and innovation activities to create connected research enterprises.
“It’s an evolutionary step for the SETsquared Partnership, building on our status as the world’s leading university business incubation centre,” he said.
