back to article Launchpads, catapults... what a load of - WAIT, there's £15m for grabs?

Techies and investors with bright ideas for commercial video, imaging and games businesses can apply for a slice of £15m this month – if they can wade past the quango-ese jargon of "catapults" and "launchpads". It's all intended to commercialise good ideas. Created by Gordon Brown in 2007, the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. keithpeter Silver badge
    Windows

    Practical Innovation

    £15m will be available "to stimulate innovation in digital media production tools and systems"

    How about spaffing 10% of that and getting CMYK sorted out in GIMP, or contributing to the evolution of Blender, or Inkscape? Really good free production tools in the hands of the unwashed may lead somewhere...

    Sort of like the OU decided not to write their own VLE but to use (I understand) some external funding to hire programmers and contribute the facilities they needed to Moodle?

    The Tramp: guess what my chances of getting funding would be...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Practical Innovation

      "The Tramp: guess what my chances of getting funding would be..."

      Certainly right. But you'll be pleased to know that the Technology Strategy Board is spending millions on a mission to help China improve its manufacturing and "meet its sustainability challenges". The idea of helping China's efforts to deindustrialise Europe can only be described as criminally stupid.

      As with everything David Cameron touches, the bonfire of the quangoes was a miserable failure, so we'll have to hope that despite decades of previous government failure to find and back winners has now been fixed. As the TSB spend around £40m a year in costs to hand out about £400m, they aren't looking very efficient, but maybe all that administration is picking the winners.

  2. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Money makes the world go round ...... and pear shaped too:-)

    Is there flash cash and slush funding for the politically incorrect ie the adept and active and inept and polarising and faith foundations or are they classed and classified frauds and scams and charities?

  3. Chris Miller
    Unhappy

    Steve Bong lives

    If satire died when Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, how do we describe this announcement? Driving a stake through its heart?

  4. Inventor of the Marmite Laser Silver badge

    Wellingtons needed

    Knee deep in bullshit

  5. Great Bu

    £1.5 m for hyper local content eh ?

    I'm going to launch 'My House' *, a revolutionary new content delivery network giving a holistic media experience to our viewers/listeners/staring with horror-ers.

    We currently capture a 100% share of our available audience within our broadcast range (as far away as I can be seen/heard, about 20 feet or so) and entertain them with a mixture of music (appallingly bad but performed live) and current affairs opinion pieces (usually 'challenging').

    Using an innovative fully organic fair trade environmentally friendly broadcast system consisting of a revolutionary gas pressure wave transmission system, we are able to get by on just a regular supply of beer and skittles.

    A grant of £1.5m will buy enough beer and skittles to enable this brave new experiment to continue right through to next weekend.

    * 'My Desk' during office hours...

  6. JayBizzle

    They really are looking forward... they have innovated a time accelerator.

    "The Technology Strategy Board's Creative Industries Strategy launched in September 2103 "

  7. Stoneshop
    Thumb Up

    They lost an opportunity for acronym redefinition

    "Connected Digital Economy Catapult"

    Or CoDEC for short.

    1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: They lost an opportunity for acronym redefinition

      "Or CoDEC for short."

      I see what you did with that. 2 level acronym.

      Nice.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ""to help businesses engage with their customers in the 'here and now' context" [Is there any other? - Ed]."

    I don't know about you guys, but I've definitely got a few customers I'd prefer to deal with on a 'somewhere else and later' context...

  9. martin_hamilton
    Megaphone

    You have to shoot for the moon to get there...

    Whilst there is a fair bit of breathless hyperbole in the blurb, do keep in mind that the concept for the Catapult centres is to bring in a hefty whack of industrial income, with public funding tapering off over time. The High Value Manufacturing Catapult has been up and running the longest, and now generates 35% of its income from industry. Here's what Steve Bong's new favourite journal The Engineer had to say about it...

    http://www.theengineer.co.uk/channels/policy-and-business/in-depth/shooting-for-success-the-launch-of-the-catapult-centres/1015778.article

    You might say "oh, that's all very well - they actually make stuff" but if we rush to discount UK Internet based stuff as the absinthe addled outpourings of Shoreditch based chancers with funny haircuts and amusing facial hair, then perhaps we are doing ourselves a disservice. Aspiring tech mavens have tended to throw in the towel and move to California because of the difficulty of obtaining startup finance in the UK, which is the agenda CDEC really addresses once you dig beneath the jargon.

This topic is closed for new posts.