InnovationRCA Incubator

The InnovationRCA Incubator brings together talented teams from design, business and technology backgrounds, helping them transform innovative ideas, products, service concepts and prototypes into viable business propositions.

The incubator has three main objectives:

• To develop a new community of design entrepreneurs empowered to act as change agents in industry.
• To pioneer new models for interdisciplinary incubation of design-led ventures.
• To demonstrate the value of this approach through a flow of commercially successful projects.

We are aiming to create new start-up firms that can attract further funding and become self-sustaining or create intellectual assets that can be licensed or sold to other firms. However, our goal is to not only generate financial returns from this process but also to create the next generation of designer entrepreneurs and business innovators.

Ventures
Our ventures, past and present, range from musical instrumentation to waterless waste management, and the first few are well on the road to success with products launched and follow-on investment received.

Selection Process
Each year, our Selection Process begins with a call for Expressions of Interest, inviting graduates from the Royal College of Art, Imperial College and its Business school, to submit an exciting and varied range of project proposals.

The innovation projects with the most potential are selected to join the InnovationRCA Incubator. We support these start-ups and help them develop interdisciplinary business ideas, create new businesses, introduce them to a network of mentors, specialists and sector experts and enable them to work with industry partners to enhance their creativity.

Support
Our support includes access to possible investors, as well as a network of MBAs, engineers and designers who might be interested in getting involved with our ventures at the early stages. If you are interested in any one of our teams, please contact us.

NESTA-backed Incubation
The InnovationRCA Incubator is funded by a three-year grant from NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts), intended to increase the number of projects incubated and develop a self sustaining model for business incubation.