To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills what collaborative research and development projects the Technology Strategy Board has funded in each of the last three years; and how much funding has been provided for each project. (294934)

Since it was established in July 2007 the Technology Strategy Board has issued offers to grant fund the following collaborative R&D projects.

A copy of the table will be placed in the Libraries of the House.

To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills whether the Technology Strategy Board has developed a practice appraisal and evaluation regime to measure the success of its activities. (294936)

The Technology Strategy Board operates an appraisal and evaluation regime covering the performance of its activities such as the programmes it delivers and the support mechanisms it uses and also at an individual project level.

The mechanisms Technology Strategy Board uses to deliver support such as Collaborative R&D, Knowledge Transfer Networks and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships are evaluated on a regular basis (usually every two years) as part of the evaluation of the products which come under the Support for Business portfolio to ensure that they continue to meet the needs of business and deliver successful results.

Individual projects are monitored on a quarterly basis during the life of the project and a final report is produced at the end of the project demonstrating the outcomes achieved. Since the Technology Strategy Board was established, it has also introduced post project evaluation at one year and five years after the end of the project, particularly to understand the economic impact. Due to the nature of the support provided by the Technology Strategy Board, the true impact of the project is often not known until a period of time after the project has completed.

The Technology Strategy Board has also produced a series of case studies demonstrating the successful outcomes of projects it has funded which are available on its website:

www.innovateuk.org

The Technology Strategy Board is currently undertaking work to further develop a framework to continue to develop and refine its metrics and impact measures to be able to understand at a more detailed level the impact of its activities. It is also working more broadly with NESTA, BIS and ESRC to develop an Innovation Index to measure UK innovation.