Bournemouth University’s School of Tourism can now work with companies using Innovation Vouchers, to offer businesses an external expert view to help businesses gain new knowledge as well as innovate, develop and grow.

The Technology Strategy Board’s national Innovation Voucher scheme enables a business to obtain help from a range of expert suppliers – universities, further education colleges, research & technology organisations, technical consultancies and Catapult centres, design advisers and intellectual property advisers.

Help from an expert could include advice on an innovative idea, learning more about using design within your business or the management and use of intellectual property.

 Bournemouth University’s School of Tourism is offering its help as part of the Agrifood Innovation Vouchers. There are many small businesses in the Agrifood industry and margins are often tight.  Time for innovation is also scarce.

Innovation Vouchers present an ideal opportunity for a business to think about how outside help and working with others can help them to grow their business profitably.  It’s a low risk way to explore new ideas that could make a real difference.

The global agricultural industry faces major challenges as it aims to produce sufficient food to meet anticipated future demand and meet changing public expectations. Rising raw material and energy costs and increasing regulation around greenhouse gas emissions and waste management also pose significant economic and operational challenges to the agriculture and food sectors – particularly smaller companies without internal R&D departments.

New technology-based solutions are needed to overcome these challenges.  An example could be smaller food manufacturers who don’t have in-house resources to help them to respond to the increased demands to improve the nutritional value of their products.  

Examples for how innovation vouchers could be used in this first round for agriculture (including horticulture and aquaculture), food and drink could include:

• developing a novel food or drink product for a particular target market
• product innovation/differentiation
• innovations in plant or animal breeding that deliver new or improved varieties or breeds
• reducing the impact of disease on crop or animal production through innovation
• implementation of new measurement or diagnostic technologies to improve business performance or product quality
• accelerating the delivery to market of a novel food processing technology that provides business benefits
• radical reformulation to reduce costs, reduce environmental impact or improve product quality/performance
• advice to improve management of intellectual property in the business as part of taking a new idea forward
• specialist advice to incorporate design more effectively into a planned R&D project from the outset

Bournemouth University’s School of Tourism has expertise to help companies within the Agrifood area. For more information regarding Agrifood and the types of companies/projects that are supported, please visit – https://vouchers.innovateuk.org/agrifood-voucher.

If you would like to discuss Bournemouth University’s School of Tourism business services please contact Claire Main on cmain@bournemouth.ac.uk.