Grants beyond funding: how to enhance and accelerate business leadership and sustainability
Research and Innovation (R&I) is the process of developing new ideas and knowledge, implementing improved procedures and accelerating the way of growing. In a business context, R&I implementation allows faster new products, services and processes development or improve the already existing ones, keeping business competitive and sustainable for the long term.
Establishing an R&I culture is a common goal for companies, but it poses numerous challenges. Navigating this dynamic terrain requires ingenious strategies beyond mere financial support. In the healthcare sector, companies utilize grants strategically to enhance their financial future, influence, credibility, and lasting impact on public health. This blog explores leveraging grants for a smart healthcare business positioning strategy, as exemplified by Quibim.
Grants represent a significant source of financial support for companies heavily invested in R&I, particularly within the healthcare sector. They offer direct, non-reimbursable funding, easing financial burdens and enabling entities to pursue key projects and initiatives.
Quibim: A success story through grants
At Quibim, we not only pursue funding but also acknowledge the strategic significance of grants, which extend beyond mere financial support. Grants enable us to markedly enhance and accelerate business leadership and sustainability. This is how we approach it.
Access to additional resources
Grants not only offer financial support but also provide access to a diverse range of supplementary resources and advantages. For instance, certain funding organizations offer acceleration programs or incubators for companies that secure investment, providing mentorship, training, as seen in the UK’s Catapult or the SBIR and STTR programs in the US. These programs grant access to key opinion leaders, industry experts, and an invaluable international network. Furthermore, grant recipients may gain entry to cutting-edge research facilities and infrastructures, specialized equipment, and high-quality data.
Moreover, grants are crucial for improving products, preventing business stagnation, and driving technological advancements that result in various benefits, such as cost reduction, time savings, enhanced security, and increased business productivity.
Validation and credibility
Applying for a grant is a complex, tough and highly competitive process, that entails a rigorous selection process. Being selected to receive a grant demonstrates that our business has been thoroughly assessed and considered a solid and valuable proposition. This external validation has the potential to enhance our company’s credibility and foster trust among investors, partnerships, and customers. By establishing our company as a grant recipient, we can distinguish ourselves from our competitors and strengthen our
reputation within the sector. For instance, prominent pharmaceutical companies, secure grants to fund research and development of new drugs and their therapies pipelines.
Research and innovation acceleration
Grants across various business sectors commonly prioritize supporting research and innovation of new technologies and solutions. Innovation enables the identification of shortcomings in products, services, technologies, processes, and business models, leading to the development of inventive solutions. Consequently, this approach can facilitate the opening of new markets or the discovery of untapped market niches. At Quibim, we allocate significant resources to research and develop our innovations through granted projects, transforming and commercializing them into certified products for both established and emerging markets.
Strategic collaborations and partnerships
Grants facilitate strategic collaborations with prestigious institutions, combining expertise and resources to address shared challenges in healthcare. These partnerships provide access to new ideas, expand influence, and create long-term business opportunities.
Intellectual property (IP) management is key to the success and impact increasing of collaborative projects. The project’s IPR strategy is relevant to all project members. Therefore, this strategy must be established from the beginning and must specify which partner/s participate in the developments. How participants are interested in protecting these rights must be made known and specified. Once the project produces results eligible for IP protection, it will be necessary to plan how those results will be exploited. Other considerations that must be considered are technology licenses, confidentiality measures and their implementation, among other issues.
Access to new markets and opportunities
By securing a grant, companies like Quibim can upscale high-impact innovative projects, potentially creating new markets or disrupting existing ones. Innovations often face challenges in attracting funding due to high risks and extended timeframes. Grants funding is design to facilitate these innovative projects in attracting the necessary investment for scaling up within a shorter period of time.
The overall objective of grants is to identify, develop and deploy high-risk and high-gain innovation. Their aim is to support the rapid expansion of innovative technologies and companies at European and international level, thus contributing to technological sovereignty. As an example of this expansion through grants, Quibim initially focused on improving workflows in hospitals, radiology, and emergency services. However, the company now spearheads the revolution of Artificial Intelligence in Precision Medicine within the healthcare sector worldwide, especially in the field of oncology, rheumatology and neurology.
Compliance with legal and regulatory requirements
Grants enable companies like Quibim to meet international regulations, obtain certifications, and build trust among customers and stakeholders by demonstrating adherence to quality and safety standards.
The healthcare field, especially medical devices, is subject to rigorous regulatory and approval processes for market entry and utilization by operators and users. The diverse activities within these processes bear significant implications for all involved stakeholders and the entire lifecycle of a medical device researchers, innovators, and clinicians should remain vigilant regarding pertinent regulations worldwide, such as the Medical Device Regulation (MDR) in Europe, UK Conformity Assessment (UKCA) in the UK, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the USA awareness of regulatory requirements can enhance the innovation process and its efficiency in terms of both social and ethical impact.
Visibility and recognition
Grants are awarded to highly innovative projects, providing valuable visibility and recognition, especially in healthcare. By accelerating research and innovation (R&I) through grants, companies like Quibim gain engagement from healthcare researchers, secure additional funding, and influence broader strategies. Quibim, a leader in biotechnological innovation, strategically utilizes artificial intelligence and data analytics to advance research and biomedical diagnosis.
Emphasizing the benefits of leveraging grants in healthcare R&I, Quibim’s success story shows that grants offer more than financial support. They unlock resources, validate credibility, foster innovation, facilitate collaborations, enable market access, support compliance, and enhance global visibility. Quibim’s ability to attract and retain top talent has played a vital role in executing R&I projects, reinforcing its leading position in Precision Health (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Grants benefits to R&I business acceleration.
At Quibim, we have a dedicated team of experts ensuring alignment between granted projects, large R&I initiatives, the corporate strategy, products roadmap and the overall company vision. Nowadays, Quibim is engaged as a partner in 7 European Projects funded by Horizon Europe framework programme and leads 1 of the 2 Spanish projects awarded to Quibim by the Ministry of Science and Innovation.
For more information about Quibim Grants, please click here.
