Innovation funding

The purpose of innovation funding is to enable companies to co-develop and co-create sustainable solutions together with local partners in developing markets. Solution development can relate to products, services, processes or business models.

Innovation funding can be used for further co-developing innovative solutions. As such, innovation funding is complementary and must be linked to an R&D project funded by Business Finland (BF). The BF R&D project can be recently approved, ongoing, or have ended within five years. The is no requirement that the R&D project itself has a focus on developing markets. R&D projects include:

• Research, development and piloting projects by SMEs and midcaps or large companies
• Company sub-projects of a Co-Innovation joint-project

Local innovation partners are a corner stone in innovation funding projects, and at least half of the total project budget must be allocated to cover project costs by one or multiple local innovation partners. Local innovation partners include for example companies, research organisations, (I)NGOs and UN organisations. Innovation funding is always counted as de minimis funding.

Innovation funding projects can include work such as:

• Research, development and innovation activities, including business model development and commercialisation of research results
• Identification of innovation partners, customers, piloting partners and product-market-fit in relation to innovative solutions being developed
• Network development, for example, to identify investors and pilot sites for solutions under development
• Market research, feasibility studies, and environmental and social impact assessments for solutions under development
• Piloting or demonstration of solution under development
• Planning for local training and capacity building for solutions under development
• Required external experts (consultants and legal services)

Read more about the innovation funding on the terms and conditions of Business Partnership Support.