kshirley | 
August 7, 2008| 
As some of you may be aware – Shercom was lucky enough to be awarded an Innovation Voucher from Enterprise Ireland. I’ve enjoyed working with the people from IT Carlow and think it’s a great idea – although I’m probably biased as I was awarded one. I can be a sore loser.
For those that are lazy readers – It’s a relatively easy way for a company to get a 5000 Euro voucher towards some research activities in association with their local Institute of Technology. By easy I mean you don’t need to invest much time in filling out the forms. Of course – you want to make the most of it so investing some thinking time is suggested. In terms of research funds – 5000 Euro will not go very far. For a small company it can be a very good starting point.
Last time I mentioned this I was only able to squeeze in the announcement at the last moment. Thank you to Mary O Higgins from the Carlow County Enterprise Board for the timely reminder. This time I’m able to give you some advance notice. Hopefully Mary won’t mind me reproducing her mail here:
Good afternoon
Some of our clients have got Innovation Vouchers in order to grow their businesses. So here is some information ……
If you own or manage a small limited company with a company registration number and you have a business opportunity or problem that you want to explore, you can apply for an Innovation Voucher worth €5,000. The Innovation Voucher allows you to concentrate on running your business while knowledge providers (among the 38 third level institutions around all Ireland) come up with a solution that could take your business to the next level
The next call will open on 1st September 2008
For more details and an application form, please refer to http://www.enterprise-ireland.com/innovationvouchers / www.innovationvouchers.ie
Innovation Vouchers can be used for any kind of innovation such as:
- new product / process development;
- new business model development;
- new service delivery and customer interface;
- new service development;
- tailored training in innovation management;
- innovation / technology audit
There is certain stuff that is ineligible, mostly training course costs and marketing/sales activities so please check out the website.
August 7th, 2008 at 22:08
[...] shiynstat wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt As some of you may be aware – Shercom was lucky enough to be awarded an Innovation Voucher from Enterprise Ireland. I’ve enjoyed working with the people from IT Carlow and think it’s a great idea – although I’m probably biased as I was awarded one. I can be a sore loser. For those that are lazy readers – It’s a relatively easy way for a company to get a 5000 Euro voucher towards some research activities in association with their local Institute of Technology. By easy I mean you don’t need to i [...]
August 7th, 2008 at 22:35
Nice writing. You are on my RSS reader now so I can read more from you down the road.
Allen Taylor
September 5th, 2008 at 13:48
I thought I could get 5 grand cash!
But instead:
The government (via Enterprise Ireland) is asking us to submit our ideas to give the smartest ones a bit of their resources (not cash!). And those same resources are paid from the budget – the tax we pay every day. Basically it is the redistribution of the money collected (by the people elected) to the best of us.
So no LCD TV for me…
Ivan | http://www.JobsBlog.ie
September 5th, 2008 at 17:27
A bit of free cash would be nice but a bit much to hope for. On the other hand – It was not the most difficult application in the world – no big presentations or business plans were needed.
Keith
October 20th, 2008 at 22:17
Damien Mulley has some interesting followup on his blog.
It seems not a lot of vouchers have been cashed in. After speaking to some other people involved it seems the numbers might be misleading – a lot more are “in the works” than have been cashed in.