NIRI assign an Innovation Partner to a client’s development team whose primary task is to manage the communication channels and accelerate innovation across multiple projects and programmes. Through the Innovation Partner, the customer has full access to NIRI’s extensive prototyping capability and support from NIRI’s 40-plus world-class textile scientists and engineers. Dr Ross Ward, chief commercial officer at NIRI, explains the rationale behind the service,

“One arguably unexpected outcome from Covid is the current global recruitment challenge, felt across all sectors, which is impacting on the capacity and capability to develop new technologies and products within commercially viable timeframes. For companies that struggle to recruit highly skilled staff and train them up to the necessary level of expertise, NIRI offers instant expertise and capability through the NIRI Accelerator, to help clients with agile R&D and support them from concept though to commercialisation.”

For the cost of one employee, clients have access not only to the scientist assigned to the project and embedded within the company, but also to NIRI’s full innovation team and the Institute’s world class facilities. As the innovation director at one £2.5billion company puts it, “NIRI has the abilities and the facilities that we do not.”