Innovation support

Support for innovation in business development is central to our vision of a modern, dynamic, knowledge-based economy competing effectively on the global stage.

What is innovation?

Although we welcome approaches from hi-tech industries, innovation is not just about radically new highly technical product developments. New ways of doing business; exploiting new markets; step-wise incremental improvements to products and services; new ways to work smarter rather than harder - these all count as innovative developments, and many of our most successful local businesses are involved in a continual cycle of innovation - probably without recognising the term!

So how can we help?

HIE Caithness and Sutherland can help at almost every stage in the innovation cycle. It may be with a strategic review of how your business is operating, helping to identify opportunities to move forward through innovation. It may be finding the right technical solution for a problem. It may even be match-making with potential business partners to work in collaboration on a new project; or identifying funding partners for a whole new development.

Whatever stage you are at, talk to one of our development managers about your plans. Everything you say is strictly confidential, and you will always retain full control of our project - but with our help, you may end up getting it to market very much quicker!