Innovation funding Tahua take auaha

Innovation Services wants more New Zealand businesses engaging in R&D. With these grants, you can unlock new innovation opportunities through student participation and product development, as well as building long-term capability in your business.

Currently there are 3 types of R&D grants available:

• New to R&D Grant — which helps you start R&D activities
• R&D Experience Grant — which supports hiring a student intern for 10 weeks
• R&D Careers Grant — which helps you pay for a graduate for 6 months.

You can also get a 15% tax credit on R&D spend through the R&D Tax Incentive (RDTI), which helps reduce the amount of income tax you pay.

Find out more about the grants available and what they cover.

New to R&D Grant

This grant helps businesses starting out in R&D to:

• fund their first R&D project
• develop their R&D capability and become long-term R&D performers. 

It’s a one-off grant aimed to help you develop R&D skills. Once you’ve built your R&D programme, Innovation Services provides guidance on accessing the RDTI.

When you apply for this grant, you’ll need to outline your planned R&D project and the skills you want to develop.

This grant helps businesses doing R&D to hire a tertiary-level student for up to 10 weeks. You gain new ideas, and the student gets hands-on R&D experience over the summer break.

This grant helps businesses doing R&D to employ a master’s or PhD graduate for 6 months.

Funding is available up to:

• $30,000 for a master’s student
• $35,000 for a PhD student.

It offers a way to bring in specialised skills while giving graduates their first step toward a successful career in R&D.

R&D grants support work that creates something new or improved in science or technology. Your work must be innovative and aim to push beyond what’s currently known. It can be a gradual advance — it doesn’t have to be a major breakthrough.

To qualify for a grant, your R&D must:

• aim to resolve scientific or technological uncertainty: a competent professional in the field can’t answer your question
• aim to create new or improved knowledge, processes, services or goods: you're looking for something that doesn't exist yet
• follow a systematic approach: you’re working with a plan, in a thorough and efficient way.

For example, you might be working on a new idea, product or system that no one in your team knows how to achieve yet, and in an area where there is no public research available.

When you apply, you’ll answer questions about the R&D you’re doing or are planning to do. If someone else has already solved the problem you’re looking into, you’ll need to show the method isn’t publicly known and that you looked for existing answers first.

If you’re not sure what you’re doing is R&D, talk to Innovation Services first.

A construction business wants to build sustainable homes using wool composite panels. A competent professional would be able to find information on wool being used as insulation, wool fibres being mixed with clay for bricks and academic articles on wool-reinforced composites. However, there’s no publicly available information on whether wool composite panels are suitable for construction.

This likely qualifies as R&D because:

• there’s a scientific or technological uncertainty, so a competent professional would need to investigate and analyse the properties of wool composite construction panels
• there isn’t any publicly available information, and the situation is different from the “standard” use, so a competent professional could test an alternative approach.

Innovation Services won’t consider your work to be R&D if it follows a standard approach, or someone else has already solved the problem and the answer is publicly available.

Example of what isn’t R&D

A client wants to build a house on a difficult site using a lot of glass. The structural engineer doesn’t know the exact structural requirements, but can work them out using existing methods.

This isn’t R&D because: 

• there’s no scientific or technological uncertainty
• a competent structural engineer could work out the answer based on existing knowledge. 

If they’re essential to your R&D, some other activities may qualify as R&D, including specialised monitoring software, creating test and dismantling prototypes.

Supporting activities that are not usually eligible unless they are essential to your R&D may include market or sales work, reproducing existing products, minor tweaks, data mapping, comparing known algorithms or security testing.

Each grant provides details about what supporting activities may be eligible.

Discover which businesses have previously received grants.

Find out how Innovation Services can support your startup.

Get in touch with any questions about getting a grant.