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Thomas Dudley Urges Midlands Businesses to Attend Innovation Ideation Workshops

Thomas Dudley 23/06/2022

Businesses based in the West Midlands, especially those involved in MedTech/HealthTech or CleanTech, are being encouraged to attend workshops with the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) to develop ideas for the region's Innovation Accelerator.

Aligning with the West Midlands Plan for Growth, the Innovation Accelerator will build the WMCA Manufacturing and Engineering strengths and be focused on two key areas, HealthTech & MedTech and CleanTech.

On Wednesday 29th June (CleanTech), and Monday 4th July (HealthTech & MedTech), WMCA invites partners to join their Ideation Workshops to help validate identified challenges and opportunities, refining areas of intervention requirements in preparation for expressions of interest opening in the second half of July 2022.

Announced in the Government’s 2022 Levelling up White Paper, The West Midlands Innovation Accelerator serves the purpose of forging a new co-design relationship between the region and Government, ensuring the region benefits from the commitment to increase in overall UK public Research and Development (R&D) funding to £20bn by 2024/5.

The Innovation Accelerator will be funded through a share of a new £100m fund, to be divided by three regional Innovation Accelerators over the next three years, to bolster the region’s innovation and R&D capability and capacity to spark commercial growth and investment. Martin Dudley, Chairman at Thomas Dudley, said:

“The Innovation Accelerator will be used to accelerate our region’s engineering R&D and Innovation strengths that lie at the very heart of our universities, economy and our manufacturing supply chains, pivoting them to springboard the growth industries of the future. By precision-injection of resources and expertise into just the right economic spaces we will stimulate and mobilise vibrant clusters of highest growth potential as force multipliers.

I believe we need to get as many Midland Manufacturing businesses to get engaged as otherwise all the funding will go to other sectors of the WMCA.”