Supporting SMEs in the Mayor’s Resilience Fund: Connected Places Catapult in Collaboration with the Greater London Authority

Connected Places Catapult collaborated with the Greater London Authority (GLA) to support a cohort of SMEs that were selected to be part of Delivery Phase 1 of the Mayor’s Resilience Fund programme.  The Fund is a partnership between the GLA and Nesta, funded by the London Economic Action Partnership, designed to incentivise innovators to address socially impactful issues facing London; helping us emerge stronger from COVID-19 and ensure the capital is prepared for future disruptive challenges.

During Delivery Phase 1, 35 finalists were awarded £10k each to develop their solutions over approximately 5 weeks. The Catapult’s role in the partnership was to help equip the cohort and prepare them for a chance to be selected for Delivery Phase 2, which will take place in July, where 10 winners will be selected to implement their ideas and awarded up to £40k each to further develop their solutions.  As such, the Catapult supported the programme by delivering two masterclasses to the cohort of 35 finalists across May and June, which were on the following topic areas:

• Understanding Public Procurement (21^st May): Providing expert advice on overcoming barriers in procurement, and in engaging with local authorities to take solutions to market.  We welcomed speakers from the Procurement Team of the Catapult, as well as Milton Keynes Council and The London Office of Technology and Innovation.
• Applying Data (1^st June): Helping businesses understand how data can be innovated and used in the context of their own sectors during deployment.  We welcomed expert speakers from the Data Science and the Applied Data & Technology teams from the Catapult to share best practices.

Following the successes of the masterclasses, we are delighted to welcome new SME registrations to join our Connected Places Catapult SME network, where we look forward to providing continued support for SMEs to further scale up their business propositions.

“Connected Places Catapult’s support was incredibly helpful for the cohort and we hope equipped them with the knowledge and connections to succeed in the future. We are very much looking forward to the results in July for the final selected 10 finalists, and we wish the cohort every success on their future business endeavours.” – Maria Geftar, Greater London Authority.

If you are an SME interested in joining our Catapult’s SME network, please register with us here: Join the SME network – Connected Places Catapult