An introduction to the catapult

‘A national centre to rapidly advance the UK’s best digital ideas to market’

Matt Ward | Senior Partnerships Manager @mwcatapult

What is the Connected Digital Economy Catapult?

Some Background

• The Digital Catapult is one of seven, soon to be nine, national

centres set up by Innovate UK to drive future economic growth

within each of their specific areas.

• The Digital Catapult’s main aim is to accelerate the best digital ideas

in the UK to market.

• To achieve this we build platforms and capabilities for small

businesses to innovate on at speed and with less risk.

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In short we…

“We create collaborations with universities, business and other not-for-profits to jointly unlock the major challenges in the data value chain in order to accelerate large numbers of innovators to market.”

Neil Crockett, CEO, Connected Digital Economy Catapult

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Collaborate > Unlock > Accelerate

Collaborate: who we work with

• The Digital Catapult never works alone, instead we

bring together a wide range of partners interested in

the success of the digital economy such as:

• Large businesses

• Start-ups and SMEs

• And the research and academic community to name

just a few.

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Our field of play5

The challenges we want to unlock

There are four main challenges we are initially focusing on:

• Building diverse data and content sets.

• Content reuse & reducing licensing friction.

• Personal data, trust and privacy.

• Next generation connectivity through building labs and demonstrators.

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How we accelerate ideas to market

We rapidly advance ideas to market by:

• Unlocking major challenges that slow down UK digital

businesses in data innovation.

• Helping innovation clusters across the UK to link up

and collaborate through our Innovator Centre.

• Showcasing exciting innovation by startups and small

businesses in our centre.

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Innovator Centre

Later this year we will open the Digital Catapult’s

Innovator Centre in London…

It will be an exciting new space for innovators, businesses and

academia to showcase their products and connect and collaborate.

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How our stakeholders can engage with us

• Startups and small businesses can help us build our platforms; use

our platforms and capabilities; use our Innovator Centre; and share

their story with others through our website.

• Large businesses can connect with some of the UK’s brightest digital

talent through our Innovator Centre; sponsor some of our

showcases/programmes at the centre; work with us on specific

projects within our challenge areas; and participate in our industry

secondment programme.

• The research and academic community can participate in our

secondment programmes; collaborate with us on specific projects

within our challenge areas; and work with us on our commitment to

help the data scientists of tomorrow get the support they need.

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Get in touch:

cde.catapult.org.uk

@CDECatapult

@WiredSussex #TechStrat

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Thank you!