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Beyond traditional evaluation: North East LEP seeks evaluator to uncover hidden impact of innovation programme

The North East Local Enterprise Partnership (North East LEP) is looking for an organisation to evaluate its latest open innovation programme. Emily Carlson, Innovation Programme Manager, explains why she wants to move beyond traditional evaluation models.

At the North East LEP, data and evaluation drive everything we do; they help us learn and improve.

We’re now looking for an organisation to work with us on evaluating our recent Challenge North Tyne programme which we ran with Innovation SuperNetwork with funding from the North of Tyne Combined Authority.  The programme helps businesses in Newcastle, North Tyneside and Northumberland launch new products and services that have real potential to be successful.

But, as this is an innovation-focused programme, we want to go beyond traditional evaluation methods and uncover the full impact of the programme. We are looking for more than a cost-benefit analysis, and want this evaluation to create a blueprint for evaluating other challenge-led programmes in the future.

Challenge North Tyne launched in 2022 and tasked businesses with coming up with new ways of solving some of the issues we’re facing in society. Now, 48 businesses have been awarded a £5,000 grant and are part of an accelerator programme to develop their ideas, and we would like to work with an evaluator who can examine not just the economic impact of the programme in terms of investment and jobs but who can also help us to unearth some of the less obvious results.

These might be changes in mind-set, or the birth of new collaborations – things that could go on to change the way businesses in our region innovate in the future.

Challenge North Tyne focused on two areas in particular: healthy ageing, and decarbonisation. Businesses put forward ideas which they believe could help decarbonise our homes, or help older people live happier, better connected, more active lives. In July, we’ll see how the accelerator programme has helped the businesses develop their ideas at a showcase event and we’d like our evaluators to be on board by then.

The full impact of increasing innovation in our region won’t be felt immediately. Programmes like Challenge North Tyne are a long term investment in the North East and we want to make sure we capture its impact and learn how to run even more successful challenge-led programmes in the future.

This evaluation will guide the way we support businesses to bring new ideas to market, so we want to get it right. If you could help, we’d love to hear from you.

The opportunity to apply for the evaluation of the Challenge North Tyne programme closes on 3 April 2023. Find out more and apply here.

Challenge North Tyne is an £800,000 open innovation project delivered by the North East LEP and Innovation SuperNetwork. The project, funded by the North of Tyne Combined Authority, is designed to bring our region’s most innovative minds together to tackle pressing problems and emerging opportunities, for the benefit of all involved. 

Home / Open innovation

Learning from cross-border innovation in Europe

During the last two years, the North East has been taking part in a pan-European project which aims to encourage open innovation and harness the potential of sharing knowledge across borders.

Andy Leigh, Project Coordinator at the North East Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), explains how taking part in this project will help to shape North East innovation challenges in the future, including a programme which aims to help businesses impacted by COVID-19.

Back in early 2018, the North East was selected to take part in the INVITE Open Innovation pilot project, along with colleagues from various countries across Europe. The aim was to facilitate cross-border collaboration and test ways of encouraging an open culture of innovation between SMEs.

Businesses from the North East were invited to take part in a series of challenges, partnering with SMEs from Europe to develop solutions to real-world problems faced by multinational manufacturers such as Nissan, Caterpillar and Komatsu.

Alongside these challenges, the Open Innovation Lab provided various avenues of support to encourage open innovation, including e-learning, help with attracting finance and investment, and grants of up to €5,000 to help bring new products and services to market.

In total, 10 North East SMEs from a range of sectors completed the programme, each pairing with a European counterpart to work together, share knowledge and develop solutions to problems faced in industry.

Taking part in INVITE was a win-win situation for us, allowing businesses in our region to share their knowledge with others and gain from the knowledge, learning and support offered as part of the programme. And it has also led to new ways of working which we will now apply to future innovation challenges we will be running in the North East, including Challenge North East, the COVID-19 Open Innovation Challenge which is launching very soon, and which will help develop solutions to some of the problems businesses in our region are facing because of the pandemic.

Collaborating with partners across Europe allowed us to see how online tools – which of course are more important now than ever before – can support innovation, and how matching businesses with each other can lead to better problem-solving and new insights.

Above all, the project showed how collaboration can lead to a better, more open culture of innovation, and better results than working alone to solve problems.

We will be bringing this open innovation approach to bear as we launch Challenge North East and come together as a region to help those businesses which are facing new, COVID-related challenges.

Is your business facing new problems caused by COVID-19? Or are you an innovator who could help find new solutions to these challenges? Find out about Challenge North East and how to take part here.