Close up of a man and woman shaking hands

At the heart of our Smart Belfast framework is the understanding that innovation is much more powerful if commercial, academic and public bodies can find ways to work together to develop new ideas, products and services.

Late in 2016, working with Invest NI, we established the ‘Smart Belfast Collaborative Challenge’ which provides funding to SMEs to work together to explore innovative opportunities in the areas of Active Living, Tourism and Transport.

Participating companies receive support to engage with experts to jointly develop ideas, explore the art of the possible, and work towards new commercial ventures.

In our current programme 68 SMEs submitted 17 scoping proposals to the programme.

We are now working with five successful SME networks each of which will receive up to £25,000 worth of support.

Three networks are focus on the tourist sector to better understand visitor behaviour to plan and manage tourism in the city.

If successful networks will be able to apply in Phase 2 for up to £170,000 (per network) to develop a commercial proposition.

You can find out more about Invest NI’s Collaborative Growth programme here.

People cycling using Belfast's public bike hire scheme, Belfast Bikes.

Belfast Bikes help to reduce car usage and traffic congestion

Belfast's public bike hire scheme is helping to reduce car usage and traffic congestion, while offering a low cost and healthy way to travel around Belfast city centre.

Drone footage of green landscape, lake and clear skies

Urban drone technologies

With a strong aeronautical engineering tradition, it’s not surprising that Belfast is also emerging as an ideal testbed for urban drone technologies.

Hopper at Belfast Harbour

5G Port use cases

5G is supporting Belfast Harbour to accelerate the digitisation of port operations.