Trailblazing Innovation Support

Innovate and grow in partnership with a leading enterprise university.

With the unique combination of our specialist business support alongside UWE Bristol’s leading-edge facilities, academic insight and student talent at your fingertips, you’ll soon be working at the cutting-edge of your industry.

Our practical innovation support is available for all our resident businesses. As well as connecting companies with the university for cutting-edge R&D activity, we also design and develop a varied support programme of workshops and events, running peer networks and 1:1 business support.

This includes:

Free GROWTHmapper® assessment – our bespoke tool for assessing business opportunities and needs
Free 1:2:1 consultation with all members of our Advisory Space network, spanning: Market Research, Strategy & Funding, Brand Voice & Copywriting, Design & Communication, Accountancy, Finance & Tax, IP, Patent & Trademark, Product Design & Prototyping, PR & Marketing, Legal & Regulatory Advice, Risk & Insurance, Recruitment, Big Data, AI and Machine Learning
Access to university facilities, such as the Engineering School’s technical facilities
Access to assigned academics, able to offer insight and consultancy
Access to all Future Space workshops and events
Digital promotion of business activity across our web and social channels.

Future Space is part of the West of England University Enterprise Zone, led by UWE Bristol.

Beyond the university’s Schools, we work closely with the leading research centres based in the University Enterprise Zone to bring additional specialist resources to our tech and science companies, including:

Automating your business at the Bristol Robotics Lab
Research and prototyping at the Centre for Print Research
Access to NHS innovation activity through the Health Tech Hub

We offer a university-partnered approach to business growth and innovation, nurturing your company with R&D and business support.

Research & Development

Ideas and product development consumes 20% of effort in a small business, creating huge barriers to embarking on, and benefitting from, R&D. Connecting all our companies with UWE Bristol’s facilities, insight and students, we facilitate the kind of exploration and product development needed to stand at the forefront of your industry, driving innovation.

This includes:

R&D consultancy projects in Applied Sciences and Engineering, led by a qualified student and co-supervised by an academic.
Trial and testing with access to university facilities, such as the Engineering School’s technical facilities and the Bristol Robotics Lab.
Bid writing support from the Research, Business & Innovation Team.
Funded research opportunities between business, academics and graduates, such as Knowledge Transfer Partnerships.
Discount on the university’s Professional Development short courses.

Business Support

We understand that every business is different and requires different levels of support across a variety of areas, be it funding, marketing, legal and beyond. Business support is at the heart of what we do, granting our companies access to a vast network of business experts, skills and talent across both the university and the wider ecosystem, nurturing growth.

This includes:

1:2:1 business coaching from both our in-house Innovation Team and Advisory_Space, our network of business experts covering everything from investment to legal and marketing, from recruitment to IP and AI.
One fully funded student internship allocated per resident company.
Business consultancy projects in Marketing, Product Design or Data Science, led by a qualified student and co-supervised by an academic.
Access to all Future Space events, including workshops and breakfasts.
PR support, including thought leadership articles and podcasts.

Meet our Innovation Team

Access to Tools

Thanh and Vikki oversee the business and innovation needs of our community and provide practical business support for our residents. As well as running peer networks and 1:1 support, they organise expert advice for resident businesses, connect companies with the university, and design and develop a varied support programme of workshops and events.

Best of all, much of our support services are available to Future Space members for free.

GROWTHmapper™

Oxford Innovation has developed GROWTHmapper™ to help high growth businesses like yours achieve their ambitions.

This digital diagnostic tool consolidates over 20 years’ experience of nurturing successful high growth businesses and is used to model your business across multiple areas for future strategic growth.

Beauhurst

Beauhurst is a searchable database of the UK’s fastest-growing businesses, along with the data surrounding the funds and accelerators that back them.

Oxford Innovation Space has a subscription to the Beauhurst platform, which allows us to track 32,000+ companies across the country, from early-stage start-ups to established scaleups.

Leading Edge Only

Oxford Innovation Space has a partnership with Leading Edge Only (LEO), the world’s largest Global Innovation Platform.

Operating in over 120 countries, LEO connects innovative fast-growth start-ups & scale-ups to corporations seeking the latest innovative technologies, products, services or expertise – corporates such as IBM and Fujitsu.

AWS

Oxford Innovation Space is one of 160 official Amazon Web Service Partners worldwide, which means that you may be able to benefit from free support packages.

This can include up to $25,000 of AWS credits.