The Digital and Creative Clyde Launchpad competition, was launched in January by the UK’s innovation agency the Technology Strategy Board, in a partnership with Creative Clyde.
The launchpad was created to accelerate the expansion of digital and creative businesses and help develop the growing community of creative businesses in Glasgow. The competition was open to SMEs in this area. Now the 11 successful companies have been offered up to 60% funding for their projects to a maximum of £60,000 per project.
The winning companies now have six months to court other investors and funders to gain match funding to enable them to proceed.
Among the winning ideas are a digital tag for wireless monitoring and security applications, a 3D virtual reality technology that creates branding and training experiences, and computer games rendering technology that will help make feature films easier and cheaper to produce.
Matthew Brown, lead technologist for the creative industries at the Technology Strategy Board said:
The idea of a launchpad is to draw companies, investment and people into the digital and creative cluster and encourage networking and cooperation. SMEs that might not be able to develop a product without support can get funding for R&D projects, but we also want to help the whole cluster grow.
David Smith, director of creative industries at Scottish Enterprise said:
The news that 11 companies have been successful in attracting this significant support is fantastic, not just for the individual companies but for the whole Creative Clyde area. Launchpad is designed to help these companies and others to raise their level of innovation and build their competitive advantage. As a vibrant, collaborative business environment and home to many media, technology and creatively minded businesses, Creative Clyde is a great place to make this happen.
The 11 winners are:
- Connect-in
- Axis Productions
- Market App
- Streamba
- Screenmedia Design
- Front Page
- Creative Training Unlimited
- Distrify
- Stem Cloud
- Dimensional Imaging
- We Are Snook