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!