Productivity Through Innovation
About Productivity Through Innovation
NTU's Productivity Through Innovation (PTI) team supported 113 SMEs between April 2019 and the end of June 2023.
Part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the £6.9m PTI project offered fully funded support to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, Derby, and Derbyshire to improve their productivity and market competitiveness.
We partnered with local businesses to understand and identify barriers to performance, innovation, and growth. Following the initial diagnostic, the team developed a tailored support package enabling businesses to grow and achieve their objectives. You can find more about the types of support we delivered below:
Support delivered
Bespoke Business Consultancy
44 SMEs received from 15 up to 325 hours of fully funded 1:1 consultancy and/or technical support delivered by an NTU industry expert(s) to address a specific knowledge and expertise gap within the business.
The support given included:
- Marketing, business or IT strategy
- Automation readiness
- Product research and development.
Packages of support
20 SMEs attended programmes designed and delivered by NTU’s award winning Nottingham Business School on a range of management and leadership challenges.
The programmes included peer group workshops on supply chain management, employee engagement, and work flow management, which then led to 1:1 consultancy to enhance and embed the workshop learning.
Talent Grants
58 SMEs were awarded a PTI Talent grant from NTU to fund 20% of a graduate’s salary for up to 1 year. This equated to a total of £226,225 ERDF grant to support these businesses.
The top 5 graduate roles were in marketing, digital marketing, business operations, engineering, and PR.
Productivity Through Innovation success stories
You can read more here about all of our fantastic businesses that have received support from NTU through the PTI programme.
You can view our collection of video case studies below:
Consultancy and graduate funding
Consultancy
Graduate funding
What businesses have said about PTI
As a small business we have no formal training in supply chain management, so it’s great to hear from people [Rob and Jayne] who have worked in large organisations and understand what we should know. Very worthwhile and well delivered.
Dominic Sheedy, Operations Manager at CEM Solutions (UK) Ltd - Supply chain support
Rakesh’s input was invaluable. He got us to spend time thinking about crucial things, and reach an agreement between ourselves before presenting our conclusions to him. He gave us a very clear structure for approaching our task. This provided leadership and gave us confidence that we were doing the right things. Rakesh seemed very knowledgeable, capable of feeding our own creativity, and pushing us in the right direction.
Chris Benbow, Director from Mentor F.L.T Training Ltd - Business strategy support
We're now able to supply fully tested products which we would not have had the resources to do without this placement. We're now equipped to provide products in addition to services we were previously providing.
Neill Reynolds, Director at M & K Electronic Solutions Ltd - Talent grant support
The funded graduate placement has helped us to employ a graduate, who introduced new skills to our team and rapidly became indispensable. This delivered over and above our aims at Independent Hostels.
Sam Dalley, Director at Independent Hostels UK - Talent grant
Contact our team
Keep in touch and stay up-to-date with the latest insights and opportunities from NTU's business community, if you would like to find out more please contact our team on +44 (0)115 848 8899 or via email at workingwithyou@ntu.ac.uk.
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