Accelerated Knowledge Transfer

Introducing Accelerated Knowledge Transfer (AKT)

Accelerated Knowledge Transfer (AKT) is a programme from Innovate UK that sees funds distributed to businesses and organisations looking to innovate or develop new and disruptive capabilities.

The programme is designed to create short-term collaborations between a business and a UK Knowledge Base, such as the University of Essex, to rapidly inject innovation capacity with grant funding of up to £35,000 per project.

AKT's are inspired by the highly successful Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) model and aims to deliver a targeted collaboration lasting between two to four months that accelerates the evaluation or development of an innovation project or concept, which has the potential for significant impact for a business or organisation.

AKT Round 4 Funding Call | Addiction Healthcare Goals | May 2025

Innovate UK’s AKT Round 4 will focus on the thematic area of Addiction Healthcare Goals with up to £2m available in total to support the AKT projects in this round.

• Competition opens on 12 May 2025 and closes on 2 July 2025.

Projects supported by the Addiction Healthcare Goals AKT fund will explore questions linked to treatment of, recovery from, and reduction or prevention of harm by addictions or dependence to substances treated in a typical treatment service in the UK.

Examples of topics within the scope for this AKT call include, but are not limited to:

• Piloting approaches to improve researcher access to treatment and recovery services and settings.
• Devising methods for improving treatment data collection, processing and availability for research.
• Developing optimal methods to engage people with lived and living experience in research and/or treatment pathway design.
• Exploring approaches to enhance awareness and openness of people with lived and living experience to use new technologies, treatments and approaches.
• Investigating barriers and devising solutions to the roll out of new treatments and technologies by service providers.
• Improving pathways linking substance use treatment and recovery services to mental health and physical health treatment, and to wider social, criminal justice and other relevant systems.

If you are an organisation or academic with an innovative idea to improve treatment, recovery, and harm prevention for those with drug and/or alcohol addiction(s), get in touch today to find out how we can partner with you on this new funding opportunity.

See the full AKT Round 4 scope here on the Innovate UK website.

Is an AKT project right for your business or organisation?

For many businesses, it can be a challenge to fully identify the barriers and solutions that can open the door for innovation, greater productivity, and growth. Here, a short term AKT with Essex can be the ideal solution.

It offers a more intensive collaboration that quickly transfers new knowledge and creates a framework to help business teams to:

• Identify innovation blockers
• Evaluate an innovation concept
• Find solutions to immediate as well as prepare the foundations for longer term challenges
• Accelerate new thinking and processes
• Develop new business models and expand capacity

Talk to us about AKTs today

Our ambitions match yours. We’re business-led and hands on. From scoping through to funding wins, from recruitment of talent through to project completion.

Speak to us today to find out how we can help you with an AKT or alternative funding opportunity today.