The NSW Government has announced a new initiative to drive strategic collaboration between SMEs, researchers, major corporations and end-users to develop leading edge products and services in key industry sectors.

Named Innovate NSW and backed by $6.7 million in funding over four years, the state government says the initiative will address the State’s biggest economic growth barriers and drive rapid advances in NSW innovative and industry capability.

Innovate NSW will:

• Provide matched financial assistance of up to $15,000 for around 250 individual firms with high growth potential for market or technology validation opportunities. A key aim is to support the development of deeper collaboration by SMEs with customers, researchers and global companies.
• Bring together consortia of over 60 innovative SMEs, large companies, researchers and end-users to develop solutions to address challenges and opportunities.

“Innovate NSW will support collaborative projects with the potential to leverage significant investment and unlock sustained economic growth for the State,” Deputy Premier and Minister for Trade and Investment Andrew Stoner says. “It will provide targeted assistance to promote collaboration between innovative SMEs and global corporate partners to bring new products and services to market, and open up new high growth business and export opportunities.

Stoner says the new initiative will help address the relative lack of connection between SMEs, the research sector, and major Australian and global corporations.

“In a globally competitive environment we can no longer afford to allow limited resources, barriers to international markets, knowledge flows, weak intellectual asset management and lack of entrepreneurial capital act as brakes on our potential. Innovate NSW will offer a low cost and low risk opportunity for businesses to trial, fine tune and validate solutions with industry and government partners and thus provide a trusted reference for promoting future domestic and international sales.”

“We are pleased to work with the NSW government on this new initiative to support the development of deeper collaboration by SMEs with customers, researchers and global companies,” adds SME Association of Australia CEO Caroline Hong. The SME Association of Australia is the peak body and voice for SMEs and we look forward to working with the NSW government on this initiative.

“NSW, and Australia, needs a Minister for SMEs working with our association, to make this initiative succeed in international markets”