If you’re an ambitious and innovative individual, team or company, CivTech is an outstanding opportunity

Across Scotland, public and third sector organisations have real problems they need to solve. With budgets under pressure and rising demand straining services, the need for smart and efficient solutions is ever greater and the public sector is increasingly aware that innovation is a good way to create them.

The Scottish Government is also committed to ensuring that a large part of its tech spend goes to small, innovative businesses.

This is where CivTech comes in.

The CivTech Innovation Flow is designed to create digital solutions to public sector problems as quickly and effectively as possible. For you – whether you’re an individual, team or company – it’s an opportunity to tackle a Challenge, solve it, and win contracts with a blue-chip public sector organisation. You’ll build a product and a business to take it as far as possible because here’s the kicker: the Challenges we issue aren’t ‘single organisation’ problems – most exist worldwide.

There’s a longer explanation of the Innovation Flow below, but in short…

Open Challenges are set. Any organisation, team or individual can respond to them. Applications are assessed, and shortlisted proposals go into an Exploration Stage where they are developed further. The best go through to the Accelerator – four months of intensive work to create the solution. And through CivTech’s unique business workshop system, a business capable of taking the emerging product to the world is created.

If you have any questions please contact us.

CivTech works with organisations across Scotland to turn problems into Challenges: defining the problem (but not the solution!), helping the organisations become comfortable with the procurement models we use, and how the Innovation Flow works.

A Challenge is simply a problem which a public sector organisation would like solved. The Challenge Sponsor — the organisation setting the problem — will pose the Challenge as an open question (can you find a solution to this problem?) rather than target a pre-determined solution (we have this problem and we want you to build this answer!). This way a Challenge can stimulate the innovative power of the nation, finding potential solutions to seemingly impossible problems.

Challenges will be specific. We’re not talking about huge infrastructure projects that require vast teams and millions of pounds to address. Instead, we’re talking about things that, with ingenuity and innovation, can make a real and positive improvements to the delivery of a public service, and so to people’s lives. And it’ll be specific to one part of the public sector, and more than likely one public sector organisation. So the challenge will be focused, a clear goal, and there’ll be expert input readily available. But we’ve also worked hard to ensure that while the Challenge Sponsor might be one organisation, the problem is a general one. So a successful solution will have a much wider potential market which, given the insight and learning you’ll gain on the programme, you’ll be ready to take on.

Challenges are released and proposals invited. It’s an open process with as few limitations as possible. And it’s universal, in the sense that anyone can apply.

Together, the CivTech team and Challenge Sponsors assess every application. We’ll select up to six written applications per Challenge to go through to interview for one of three places on the Exploration Stage.

With the Challenges published with full background documentation, submissions will be possible during the Application Window.  

Anyone can apply, from anywhere. You could be an existing company with a team and a product that is ready to be repurposed to answer the challenge. Or a group of graduates with a great demo. Or a digital team that’s looking for a great idea to get involved with. Or even the reverse — an individual with no digital background but with real insight into the challenge and a cracking idea but can put together a great support team.

The Accelerator Stage is an intense period of fast-track product development that sits at the heart of the CivTech Innovation Flow. Teams and Challenge Sponsors come together to produce an MVP: a Minimum Viable Product that both works and is capable of further development.

There’s a focus on collaborative working, and sharing knowledge and experience to stimulate innovation and maximise cross-pollination of ideas. We’re big on business development and our comprehensive workshop system means that all teams — whatever stage they’re at — have the best possible grounding with which to take their products forward.

Each team completing the Accelerator will receive £30,000 (plus VAT if applicable), with no hidden charges, and no equity or IP stakes being taken.

Designed by people with extensive experience of start-ups, incubation, growth and accelerators, it’ll have everything you need to succeed. Our workshop programme will cover everything you need to know about starting up and growing a tech business as fast and as successfully as possible. The programme is highly flexible too — so whether you’re a compete beginner in terms of business, or an established SME with a new product idea or a product that can be re-engineered, you’ll find a fit with everything going on.

The CivTech Accelerator will also prepare you for working with and winning business from the public sector. With wide ranging experience of both the public and private sectors on hand, and deep understanding of how best to work at their intersection, the CivTech Accelerator represents perhaps the most powerful route into a huge, previously hard to enter sector.

Accelerator stage key principles: 

• Duration: 15 weeks

• Location: The overwhelming majority of Accelerator workshops, meetings and other activities will be delivered remotely, but this Stage will be punctuated by a series of regular, mandatory in-person days in central Scotland. For some Challenges it will be appropriate or necessary for teams to visit Challenge Sponsors’ facilities or other locations relevant to the Challenge

• Workshops: Compulsory, unless otherwise agreed in advance

• Payment: £30,000 (plus VAT if applicable) per team, paid in four instalments of £6,000 during the Accelerator and a final payment of £6,000 after Demo Day.

• If all parties agree to negotiate a Pre-Commercial Agreement after the Accelerator Stage, an additional payment of £5,000 (plus VAT if applicable) will be paid when negotiations are complete, regardless of the outcome.

• Teams must be formal companies — we strongly recommend seeking legal advice and being prepared for this stage so that payment can be made promptly to a business bank account if participants have formed/are planning to form a new company

• Intellectual Property: this will reside with the participating company

• Equity: neither CivTech nor the Challenge Sponsors will take any equity in your company

In the post Post-Accelerator Stage you’ll have the opportunity to extend your relationship with your Challenge Sponsors, to further develop the solution and roll it out. Once the product is commercially viable, the Challenge Sponsor will receive an in-perpetuity royalty free licence. Essentially, they will have given companies the best leg-up possible so further funding for post-commercial development will come from other clients. Experience has taught us that this is just the start — many of the teams that have gone through the Innovation Flow are winning contracts from both the wider public sector, and the private sector, based on the work they do with us.

In the private sector environment, it’s pretty normal for companies emerging from an accelerator to look to grow and build from their initial customer base as fast and effectively as possible. If the business is genuinely capable of scaling, a number of things will happen relatively fast: turnover will grow, staff numbers will increase, expertise in terms of mentors and advisors will be brought in to further fuel that growth, and investment will be raised. New versions of the product will be developed and sold. New services and products will also be developed and taken to market. It may form alliances with major corporations and other organisations. And its reach will spread nationally, across Europe, and into international markets.

With a great product, and that vital first customer, we firmly believe businesses coming out of the CivTech Innovation Flow have the potential to follow the same trajectory. And this is where Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Scottish Enterprise, the Scottish Investment Bank and other support channels will get involved, to help to drive the businesses forward – to their benefit, the citizens’, and the nation's.

The purpose of the Pre-Commercial Agreement is to enable you to further develop your product following the Accelerator / Development Stage, to take it from MVP to a commercially viable product. If all parties agree to enter into a pre-commercial agreement, you will be expected to submit a project plan and proposal for Pre-Commercial Stage work (including costs, duration and deliverables) that will then be discussed and negotiated between yourself, the Challenge Sponsor(s) and CivTech. 

Pre-Commercial stage key principles: 

• Payment: further contracts can be negotiated up to a total value of £210,000 or £610,000 (plus VAT if applicable) per team (depending on whether your Challenge was advertised on Public Contracts Scotland with a value of up to £250,000 or up to £650,000.)

• Intellectual Property: will reside with the participating company

• Equity: Challenge Sponsors will take no equity

• Licensing: post-commercial deployment the Challenge Sponsor is entitled to a royalty-free licence

• Duration: negotiated with Challenge Sponsor

• Location: your choice