The Swindon-based Technology Strategy Board, the UK’s innovation agency, has been put at the heart of the Government’s growth agenda with a £185m budget increase announced last week by Chancellor George Osborne.
The move will enable TSB to have a more powerful impact on the role it can play in generating UK economic growth by building on its existing support programmes for innovative UK businesses. The areas set to benefit include its biomedical ‘catalyst’, additional support for innovations in energy and biotechnology and 
network of ‘catapult’ centres.
Since it was established six years ago, the TSB has delivered a wide range of programmes to support innovative technologies that are not only generating UK business growth but promise to radically improve the quality of life for millions of people living in the UK and abroad. It has a current budget of around £404m.
Its catapult centres are physical centres where the very best of the UK’s businesses, scientists and engineers work side-by-side on late-stage research and development – transforming high-potential ideas into new products and services to generate economic growth.
TSB’s catalyst is a competitive awards programme which aims to accelerate early-stage ideas more rapidly towards commercialisation through different phases of funding.
Universities and science minister David Willetts said: “The increase in funding for the Technology Strategy Board recognises the essential work they are doing to support innovative businesses commercialise their products and get them into the market place.
“Programmes such as Smart, the biomedical catalyst and catapult centres are keeping the UK at the front of the global race to commercialise new technologies, driving the growth agenda and playing an important role in our industrial strategy.”
TSB CEO Iain Gray added: “UK business will benefit greatly from this announcement as we will be able to increase the impact we already have on helping to generate UK economic growth. Over half of our funding goes to SMEs and this financial endorsement of our focussed, business-led approach will allow us to continue to bridge the gap between concept and commercialisation, helping the innovations of today become the commercial successes of tomorrow.”
TSB-backed projects include more efficient, affordable and well-designed low carbon vehicles, transformative cell therapy and stratified medicine treatments for cancer and other severe health conditions, innovative solutions to help older adults live independently for longer and radical new designs and products that promise to transform the homes of the near future.
