UK SBS PS150219 Space Mission

Tender description

Innovate UK is the UK’s innovation agency. Its goal is to accelerate economic growth by stimulating and supporting business-led innovation. Innovate UK is a government agency, based in Swindon and sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). Innovate UK brings together business, research and the public sector, supporting and accelerating the development of innovative products and services to meet market needs, tackle major societal challenges and help build the future economy. It delivers its objectives through a series of programmes, in which businesses are encouraged to participate in, such as Collaborative Research & Development, Smart, and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, and, in order to help businesses internationally, Entrepreneur Missions. This specification relates solely to the Entrepreneur Missions programme. Innovate UK supports events known as ‘Entrepreneur Missions', run in partnership with UKTI, Catapults and private sector partners, in which a selected group of innovative and often early-stage UK companies are given intensive support to get them ready to travel to countries strong in innovation and enterprise, such as the US, Brazil or India. The number of Entrepreneur Missions run by Innovate UK is currently small – 3 to 4 every year. As a result, the organisation has decided not to manage Entrepreneur Missions out of core resources, but to contract out the preparation and project management of the missions and logistical support before, during and after, the missions. Each mission is therefore delivered in partnership with a private sector contractor to provide this expertise. The aim of the current tender, therefore, is to procure the services of a private sector provider to support the next Entrepreneur Mission in the Space sector, to the US market in November 2015. The main objective of this and all other Entrepreneur Missions is to grow the participating businesses through early internationalisation. Specific objectives are for the mission companies to 1. Raise investment 2. Generate sales leads 3. Establish new connections