Digital Catapult
where digital
innovation lives
@digicatapult • #wheredigitalinnovationlives • digicatapult.org.uk
“Thanks to Digital Catapult
we have more than doubled
the size of our company in less
than 12 months. We are pushing
our disruptive technological
innovation to the largest
players in the sector.”
Dr Jozef Dobos
Founder & CEO, 3D Repo Ltd
We work with companies
of all sizes to transform
their businesses through
digital innovation
Together we deliver
commercial success
and sustainable
economic growth
Accelerating the
practical application
of digital technology
Digital Catapult helps UK
companies win at home,
and on the global stage
A national digital strategy
delivered locally
Digital Catapult is here to drive growth in the UK economy
through the practical application of digital innovation
and culture. We do this to make UK businesses more
competitive, more productive and to drive regional growth.
I’m excited to lay out our refreshed strategic vision building on the momentum Digital Catapult has gained
since its foundation in 2013. We consulted extensively with
over 250 companies across the country and our community
of stakeholders. This strategy is endorsed by industry,
government and academia. We’re excited to put it into action.
Accenture and Oxford Economics calculated that digital
technology has the potential to yield an additional £55bn
for the UK economy by 2020.* Our goal is to help companies
develop new markets faster and transform existing
businesses. We will do this by focusing on sectors with the
most untapped potential to deliver future economic growth.
Through our London and regional centres, Digital Catapult
helps UK businesses tap into digital disruption, create a
culture of open innovation, and multiply growth from the
grassroots up and from the boardroom down. We continue
to forge deep relationships with the UK’s universities and
research organisations to collaborate and tap into their
thinking, to assess and demonstrate commercial application.
At Digital Catapult, we empower thousands of UK innovators
to succeed - creating strong economic growth and
competitiveness on the global stage, for the benefit of all.
With your help and involvement, we believe that this is
a strategy to transform UK business and make our whole
economy more digital, more productive and a better
place to work and grow.
*Data calculated from Accenture/Oxford Economics: ‘Digital Disruption: The growth multiplier’
Dr Jeremy Silver
CEO
@JeremyS1
Digital Catapult focuses on sectors
where digital innovation can make
the greatest impact, to increase
productivity, efficiency and scale
Digital Catapult is currently focusing on two sectors:
Digital manufacturing
Accelerating the adoption of digital technologies,
to increase productivity and the creation of new value
in the UK manufacturing – from concept to production
and supply chain across the life cycle of products.
Creative industries
Creating new markets for the UK’s creative industries
using emerging digital technologies such as blockchain
and smart contracts, virtual, augmented and mixed
reality systems; making the UK the best place in the
world to create content for immersive systems.
In addition we are exploring opportunities in digital
health and care.
Digital health and care
Enabling people to live longer, happier, healthier lives
through digital technology.
DIGITAL MANUFACTURING
Manufacturing
contributes over
In 2015
exports of goods
produced by
manufacturing
sector estimated
£257bn
£6.7trillion
The sector
provided
to the global
economy
2.6m
jobs in the
UK in 2015
Digital technology could revolutionise
productivity, quality and increase
allocative efficiency in supply chain
management and pricing
CREATIVE INDUSTRIES
Employs 2.3m people
and supports 182,000
businesses, mostly
small and medium
size companies
Nine sub sectors
with a combined
Gross Value Added
of £84.1bn in 2014
Higher bandwidth and increasing
mobile access is leading to a revolution in
content programming and new services
DIGITAL HEALTH
AND CARE
The UK digital health
systems market was
worth £1.3bn in 2014
The UK health
analytics market was
worth £155m in 2014
In 2015 the UK wearable medical device market was
estimated to be between
£36m and £77m
Delivering the value
of applied research
to the market
Rapid digital innovation can disrupt businesses
or lead to new growth and opportunity.
Digital Catapult gives UK companies an unfair advantage
by helping them harness the best academic research
and digital innovation.
We believe in tangible innovation to deliver transformation
and growth through the use of digital. That is why
we have identified four key technology drivers that we
believe can positively disrupt business models, create
competitive advantage and deliver a superior experience
for customers - data-driven, connected, intelligent,
and immersive technologies.
Technology has the power to transform existing
businesses and create new ones.
Focusing on these digital enablers Digital Catapult
is accelerating that process with scale-ups and
traditional businesses.
We do this by creating prototypes, testing and refining
in experimental environments, trialing new services
and applications and collaborating to grow new markets.
From R&D to production, from supply chain to point
of delivery, we work with companies to capture the
benefits of digital transformation.
Dr Marko Balabanovic
CTO
@balabanovic
Sharing and learning from
data is critical for businesses
to develop and grow
Massive increases in the use of personal data have
raised concerns and triggered new regulations.
Digital Catapult is helping companies to develop
new means of enhancing trust, privacy and security.
Digital Catapult works with organisations to create new
business models that benefit from the secure transfer
of data and services.
The aim is to enable businesses to build consumer
engagement through new data transactions ensuring
best practice across data responsibility, transparency,
ethics and compliance. There is an opportunity for
the UK to be the global leader in trust and responsible
innovation in personal data.
“We see great potential benefits in empowering our
citizens to use their personal data to help us deliver
better services. Nowhere is this more important
than ensuring that their personal data, under the
citizens control, is able to flow between their health
care and social care providers. We are pleased
to be working with Digital Catapult to explore
these opportunities.”
David Law
CEO, Herts Valleys Integrated Care Programme
Why not also check out:
Cyber 101
Backed by DCMS and in partnership with a consortium
of experts Digital Catapult is currently rolling-out
Cyber 101, a national business advice and mentoring
programme to support UK cyber security businesses
to scale, in turn helping to increase the size of the
UK cyber security market.
Smart contracts
Working with the UK Games Fund, Digital Catapult
has developed a smart contracts working prototype.
Using Ethereum blockchain technology the project
allows individuals to work outside their circles of trust
to create new Intellectual Property (IP).
To find out more about how Digital Catapult
is supporting the data-driven economy,
visit digicatapult.org.uk/data-driven
Connectivity delivers the
transformative possibilities
of digital technologies
We need effective networks and digital infrastructure
to deploy technologies at scale and harness the Internet
of Things (IoT), removing silos of innovation and barriers
to market.
“Working with Digital Catapult has been fundamental
to our business growth and funding. We have been
able to test and pitch our ideas, gain new insights
and the confidence to progress with our prototype,
and we’ve been able to advance our business and
built our core network and connections.”
Chris Thompson
Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Enable iD
Why not also check out:
Digital Catapult works to level the playing field for
businesses, combining our technical and commercial
expertise to help build the digital infrastructure
of the future.
LPWAN
Things Connected is an IoT innovation programme
that delivers the UK’s largest distributed IoT LPWAN
in collaboration with a range of partners.
We do this in two ways:
5G
Digital Catapult is building a 5G test bed in Brighton
as part of the 5GIC project. By enabling early
engagement the aim is to help users shape the
way services will be delivered by 5G infrastructure
in the future.
Creating networks and giving access to hardware
and services, ranging from cutting-edge 5G test
beds and Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN)
sites to support for development and commercialisation
of ideas.
Supporting early stage ecosystem development
to stimulate demand, demonstrate innovators’
technical capability and build new business
models and operating standards.
IoTUK
Digital Catapult, partnering with Future Cities Catapult,
is responsible for delivering the UK Government’s
IoTUK programme. To accelerate the adoption of IoT
technology, delivering projects in Smart Cities, Health,
Privacy and Trust research and hardware acceleration.
To find out more about how Digital Catapult is helping
to deliver the digital infrastructure of the future,
visit digicatapult.org.uk/connect
“The business plans of the next
10,000 startups are easy to
forecast: take X and add AI.”
Kevin Kelly, WIRED
The term “AI” is a single catch-all that describes a set
of complex technologies that range from simple process
automation to deep machine learning. The ability to
automate, predict and deliver is at the very heart of
digital innovation.
Digital Catapult opens up the power of intelligent
technologies to a broad audience: facilitating access
to large data sets for SMEs to train their algorithms;
working with large businesses to continue to push the
boundaries of what is possible in Artificial Intelligence
(AI); and working with policymakers and academics
to ensure the UK takes a lead in transparent and
ethical AI applications.
“Working with Digital Catapult allowed The Royal
Society to engage creatively with AI and Machine
Learning researchers across the UK, exploring how
to make innovative use of rich datasets. This has helped
us to demonstrate the depth of innovation capability
in the UK SME community, as part of our Machine
Learning policy project, as well as showing some
of the potentially beneficial applications of machine
learning and data analytics.”
The Royal Society
Why not also check out:
Hacking Happiness
Digital Catapult’s hackathon in partnership with The
Royal Society set out to better understand the human
environment and its impact on wellbeing using machine
learning. We did this by providing access to large closed
datasets around health and wellbeing, and sensor
equipment supplied by partners.
IBM Watson AI XPRIZE
Digital Catapult is the official UK advocate partner of
the $5m IBM Watson AI XPRIZE, designed to demonstrate
how humans can collaborate with AI to tackle the world’s
grand challenges. Digital Catapult is providing technical
experts and mentorship to competing teams and will
showcase the leading innovations to come out of the UK.
To find out more about how Digital Catapult is
opening up intelligent technologies to UK businesses,
visit digicatapult.org.uk/intelligent
Immersive technologies are
revolutionising interactions
between people and their
environment
“Digital Catapult enables us to test and demo
our products live and make immediate impact
on our customers. It is the way Immersive content
should be experienced.”
Adam Arrigo
CEO, TheWaveVR
Virtual and augmented reality technologies have
been evolving for many years, but recent advances
in display and capture technology have caught up,
opening up the opportunities for consumer and business
applications alike. The challenge now is to build upon
the wealth of knowledge and skill in this area and drive
forward sustainable, game-changing innovations that
will make the UK the best place in the world to create
immersive content.
Why not also check out:
Digital Catapult opens up immersive content for UK
companies, providing unrivalled access to the latest
developments in virtual, augmented and mixed reality,
as well as haptics and new human machine interfaces.
We help large businesses to test and showcase test
their content, support SMEs to surface immersive
innovations and partner with thought leaders in
academia and industry.
Immersive lab
Digital Catapult has created a dedicated Immersive
Lab in our London HQ, which allows businesses to
showcase the latest immersive content and offers a
cutting-edge testing site for businesses to surface their
immersive innovations.
Augmentor
In partnership with Seedcamp, Digital Catapult runs a
10-week equity-free support programme for immersive
startups to test and develop new innovations.
To find out more about how Digital Catapult is
releasing the potential of immersive technologies,
visit digicatapult.org.uk/immersive
How we make digital
innovation happen
We make innovation happen by removing the barriers
to growth faced by businesses.
Our interventions range from those that impact at sector
level, to that are relevant to groups of companies in a
sector and those that have a direct impact on individual
companies. They include:
•Building, co-ordinating and increasing access
to large scale test beds
•Driving engagement between small companies
and large companies
•UK, EU or International Collaborative Research
& Development projects
•Accelerating the growth of markets by supporting
ecosystems and helping exports
•Development of standards
•Building prototypes, testing feasibility
of technologies
•Helping large companies become more efficient
through the introduction of digital innovation
•Providing access to facilities, skills and space
Digital Catapult works with
SMEs and large corporates
and collaborates with leading
universities and researchers
SMEs
For SMEs our priority is to help accelerate sustainable
growth and development in digital innovations to
make the UK economy stronger. Digital Catapult has
a number of collaborative programmes covering
technical and commercial development to assist
businesses at different stages as they scale.
Larger corporates
Working with larger corporates, Digital Catapult
strengthens the culture of innovation and drives
collaboration with the UK’s brightest digital innovators,
industry experts and applied research. Opportunities
include Pit Stops, hackathons, industry briefings,
consulting and supporter packages.
”Doing the Pit Stop means our ideas have gone from
conceptual to practical – we’ve been able to take steps
towards developing solutions with partners.”
Julian Kirby
Director, PwC
Universities and researchers
Strong relationships with leading universities reinforces
the connection with the research community. Digital
Catapult also collaborates on R&D projects to accelerate
the commercialisation of research and amplifying the
impact to the economy.
Digital Catapult’s broad
network helps UK firms
deliver better products
and services to market
at home and abroad
Meeting the needs
of consumers and
ultimately boosting
the UK economy
Digital Catapult has centres in Brighton,
North East & Tees Valley, Northern Ireland
and Yorkshire in addition to its London
headquarters. Each of the Catapult centres
has a unique focus and is aligned with
local digital innovation initiatives.
To find out more about our centres
visit digicatapult.org.uk/our-centres
Digital Catapult Centres
University Partnerships
5G & Internet Test Beds
LPWAN
IoT
Why not get in touch
Dr Jeremy Silver
Chief Executive Officer
[email protected]
Dr Marko Balabanovic
Chief Technology Officer
[email protected]
Jessica Rushworth
Strategy and Policy Director
[email protected]
Dr Maria Slowinska
Innovation Director
[email protected]
Dr Irene Lopez de Vallejo
Director of Collaboration, Research & International Development
[email protected]
Lucie Burgess
Head of Personal Data & Trust
[email protected]
Caroline Gorski
Digital Manufacturing Lead • Head of Internet of Things
[email protected]
Matt Ward
Creative Industries Lead
[email protected]
Aurelian Simon
Head of Immersive
[email protected]