Information for businesses

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) is a UK-wide programme enabling organisations and businesses to improve their competitiveness, productivity and performance. KTP achieves this by helping organisations to access knowledge, technology, or skills from the UK's knowledge base, which includes universities, further education (FE) colleges and research and technology organisations (RTOs). Many universities and colleges in the UK are recognised worldwide for their - often groundbreaking - research. KTP enables you to tap into this to help  take your business forward.

Whether you are a commercial, not-for-profit, small or large organisation, a KTP will help you:

'Classic' KTPs tend to be between one and three years' duration and typical projects have included:

• product development and improvement
• design and implementation of management information systems
• computerisation of corporate information systems
• creation of in-house design resources

You tell us the area of your business you wish to develop and we work closely with you to define exactly what you want to achieve and the funding options available. Working together we will prepare a detailed project proposal form and submit it for approval. Once we are given the go ahead, we then help you select a graduate with the right skills and experience to fulfil your requirements. Our academics will continue to work with you for the duration of the project, transferring knowledge and know-how into your company.

In order to be eligible to take part in a KTP, it is essential that partner companies and organisations must:

• be able to demonstrate they are financially viable
• be able to provide appropriate supervision for the Associate
• be capable of making significant use of the knowledge, skills or technology transferred

KTPs are part-funded by the Government via the Technology Strategy Board and 18 other funding organisations, including Research Councils and other Government agencies recognising the importance of knowledge transfer to economic development and wealth creation. The grant rate depends upon the size of the company / partner organisation - normally it will be 60% for a micro business or SME and 40% for a large enterprise. The typical annual costs to a company are around .

The partner organisation pays the balance of the costs (i.e. the proportion of the partnership budget not covered by the Government-funded grant) to the knowledge base partner in instalments after the grant has been deducted.

Further advice about the costs of KTPs and about the funding available is available from the KTP Office (contact details below).

If you'd like to find out more about KTPs, you can visit the national KTP website - KTP Online, where you'll find a wealth of information including in-depth case studies of individual KTP projects, videos about recent projects and companies' reports on their involvement in KTP.

To download a copy of the KTP 'Accelerating Business Innovation' brochure, click here.

If you have any questions or queries, or would like advice about KTP, please call or email us (contact details below).