Eleven creative and digital businesses in Glasgow have won £620,000 between them to help develop innovative new products and services.
The successful companies are winners in a funding competition, ‘The Digital and Creative Clyde Launchpad’, launched in January 2013 by the UK’s innovation agency, the Technology Strategy Board, in partnership with Creative Clyde.
Among their innovative ideas for new products are a small flexible digital tag for wireless monitoring and security applications, a 3D virtual reality technology that creates highly immersive branding and training experiences and computer games rendering technology that will help make feature films easier and cheaper to produce.
The Digital and Creative Clyde Launchpad is designed to accelerate the growth and expansion of digital and creative businesses and help develop the growing community of creative businesses in Glasgow. The competition was open to SMEs and after a series of competitive rounds, the successful eleven companies have been offered up to 60% funding for their innovative R&D projects, up to a maximum of £60,000 per project.
The companies now have six months to court other investors and funders to gain match funding to enable them to complete their R&D projects.
David Bott, director of Innovation Programmes at the Technology Strategy Board, said: "The idea of a Launchpad is to draw companies, investment and people into the digital and creative cluster and encourage networking and cooperation. SMEs that might not be able to develop a product without support, get funding for R&D projects, but we also want to help the whole cluster grow."
David Smith, director of Creative Industries at Scottish Enterprise, commented: "The news that eleven companies have been successful in attracting this significant support is fantastic, not just for the individual companies but for the whole Creative Clyde area.
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"Launchpad is designed to help these companies and others to raise their level of innovation and build their competitive advantage. All of the winners announced today are seeking to invest in R&D to accelerate their business growth, exploit new international markets and increase revenue from new products and services.
"As a vibrant, collaborative business environment and home to many media, technology and creatively-minded businesses, Creative Clyde is a great place to make this happen."
The eleven winners are Connect-in, Axis Productions, Market App, Streamba, Screenmedia Design, Front Page, Creative Training Unlimited, Distrify, Stem Cloud, Dimensional Imaging and We Are Snook.
