CivTech Accelerator and Product Services

Tender description

The CivTech programme is an initiative that sits in the Scottish Government's Digital Directorate. Its mission is to drive daring and innovation in the public sector by collaboratively solving challenges to make people’s lives better, and in doing so create generations of sustainable, high growth companies. At the heart of the programme is an Innovation Flow that takes open challenges and publishes them for anyone to respond to, takes a number of selected proposals for each Challenge through an Exploration Stage, and then selects one for each Challenge to go through a full Accelerator programme, in which participating companies, while developing their Minimum Viable Product [MVP] also benefit from a comprehensive business workshop system, and a networking programme linking them to decision makers across the public sector, to early-stage investors and whenever possible, additional prospective customers. The overall system is designed to deliver both an MVP, which Challenge Sponsors [the public sector organisations that have set the Challenge] can take forward with further contracts, and a business capable of fully exploiting the new product - not just within Scotland and the UK, but eventually across the world. CivTech harnesses new technologies to drive daring and innovation in the public sector. It brings together private sector innovation, public sector organisations, and citizens and citizen groups to develop more efficient and effective products and services, which will translate to new, better, faster and easier experiences for everyone. Backed by the Scottish Government, it provides an unprecedented route for entrepreneurs, start-ups, SMEs and other businesses to develop the benefits of digital transformation in the public sector. And crucially it creates a swift, secure and practical pathway to help those businesses win public sector contracts. So far, CivTech has run five complete cycles of the Innovation Flow, which runs as follows – CivTech advertises a set of Challenges – problems public sector organisations have that they’d like solved – and invited anyone to come forward with proposed solutions. In each cycle there has been an enthusiastic response and a large number of applications. The CivTech team together with the Challenge Sponsors [the public sector organisations that have set the Challenges] selected three solutions per Challenge to go into an Exploration Stage. During the Exploration Stage teams work with the Challenge Sponsor, the CivTech team and other relevant organisations [such as the appropriate Innovation Centre] to further develop their proposed solution. At the end of the Exploration Stage teams pitch their developing solution to the Challenge Sponsor and the CivTech team, who select one team per Challenge to go through to the full Accelerator Stage. The successful solutions must not only answer the Challenge, but also demonstrate commercial potential beyond the original Challenge Sponsor [either by selling through to other public sector organisation, or developing other markets for the product]. The Accelerator runs for some four months, during which time every team builds their product, and their business proposition. In addition to the hard graft associated with developing these things, the teams benefit from a full workshop programme covering everything an ambitious business needs to know about growing their business as fast and effectively as possible, working across both the private and public sectors, and working nationally and internationally. Throughout the Accelerator there are a number of Check Gate weeks. Occurring approximately every month during the Accelerator, the Check Gate consists of the team on a Challenge, their Challenge Sponsor and the CivTech team meeting to review progress. It is also the formal mechanism by which the tranche payments for the Accelerator are authorised. The teams also benefit from visits by key decision makers in the public sector, coaches and mentors, ‘fireside chats’ and continuous help from their Challenge Sponsor [domain experts in their own right], and the CivTech team [itself having huge experience in start-up, business development, innovation and accelerators].