Higher Education Innovation Fund: invitation to apply for special funding

To:	Heads of HEFCE-funded higher education institutions
Of interest to those responsible for:	Relations between HE and business and the wider community; Contract and collaborative research; Continuing vocational education; Strategic planning
Reference:	01/34
Publication date:	May 2001
Enquiries to:	Adrian Hill, tel 0117 931 7351, e-mail a.hill@hefce.ac.uk Or HEFCE regional consultants

Executive summary (read on-line)

Information on the related initiatives run by OST: the Science Enterprise Challenge, University Challenge and Public Sector Research Exploitation Fund.

Frequently asked questions about HEIF

Download

Report
[ MS Word 78K | Zipped Word 36K | Adobe PDF 24K | Zipped PDF 21K ]

Annexes
[ MS Word 73K | Zipped Word 19K | Adobe PDF 55K | Zipped PDF 47K ]

Executive summary

Purpose

1. This document invites applications for higher education institutions in England to apply for special funding to support activities that will increase their capability to respond to the needs of business (including companies of all sizes and sectors and a range of bodies within the wider community), where this will lead to identifiable economic benefits.

Key points

2. The new Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) builds on the third stream of funding initiated by the Higher Education Reach-out to Business and the Community (HEROBC) Fund. It is designed to sit alongside institutions' teaching and research activities, enabling them to secure the maximum economic benefit from those activities.

3. The fund will continue to provide a platform of core funding to help HEIs enhance organisational and structural arrangements for implementing their strategic aims in this area, so that they can contribute to economic growth and competitiveness.

4. Applications for funding should be based on the criteria for allocations and distribution arrangements. These are set out in the guidance notes on Knowledge Exploitation Funding (Annex A) and the application guidelines for HEIF (Annex B). A list of acronyms is given in Annex C. All English HEIs were consulted on the fund in HEFCE 01/22; a summary of responses received is in Annex D.

Action required

5. Applications for funding should be sent to Adrian Hill at the HEFCE, to arrive by 20 July 2001.