Startups in the South West of the UK can now access funding for early stage developments with the launch of the Microelectronics iNet.
The £2.3m project was officially launched this week to support startups and new projects with innovative ideas in the region.
"Innovation isn't just being on the bleeding edge but thinking differently and using what you have to make a commercial success," said iNet director Rick Chapman, who previously worked for ST/Hitachi spinoff SuperH in Bristol and Edinburgh startup Spiral Gateway. "But you can bootstrap your startup in different ways such as corporate backing, spin-outs, spin-ins and innovating with business models, and the iNet is a new to support innovation."
The Microelectronics iNet is one of five in the UK, all in the SouthWest region, with the others supporting Aerospace, Creative Media, Biomedical and Environmental Technologies. European funding has been matched by partners including the University of the West of England, STMicroelectronics, the National Microelectronics Institute and the Electronics, Sensors and Photonics Knowledge Transfer Network.
"We have three years of funding for a glorious experiment," said Chapman. "Over the three years we expect around 50 companies to use the project support and look to help 200 of the 800 companies in the region."
The launch was supported by Prof David May, co-founder of XMOS Semiconductor and Professor of Computer Science at Bristol University. "We have spent $ 30m so far at XMOS but that's small change for a semiconductor company now," he said. "We have to be quite smart where we go with microelectronics, and while we have seen a billion fold improvement in cost performance over the last 40 years, this period from 2010 onwards is more a fashion market and a clear example of this is Apple, there's an obvious example."
"A lot of this will be about strengthening supply chains, bringing more companies into the network and making best use of the knowledge base getting ideas out of the lab to be exploited," said Nick Sturge, director of the SETsquared Business Acceleration Centre in Bristol. "The whole business support environment is changing and this is the best opportunity that we have to make use of the support available."
Nick Flaherty has been covering technology and startups since 1990 and is based in Bristol, where he co-founded the SiliconSouthWest network. During that time he has worked for most of the electronics magazines and newspapers in the UK and several in Europe and the US, covering all areas of the industry. He blogs at The Embedded blogwww.embeddedblog.blogspot.com and Portable Multimediawww.portablemultimedia.blogspot.com and at www.flaherty.co.uk.
Nick Flaherty has been covering technology and startups since 1990 and is based in Bristol, where he co-founded the SiliconSouthWest network. During that time he has worked for most of the electronics magazines and newspapers in the UK and several in Europe and the US, covering all areas of the industry. He blogs at The Embedded blogwww.embeddedblog.blogspot.com and Portable Multimediawww.portablemultimedia.blogspot.com and at www.flaherty.co.uk.
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