Posted: 28 January 2025
R&D support for start-ups and small businesses
Innovation is a major driver of business growth, however many start-ups and small businesses can often face barriers, such as lack of technical expertise or funding, when trying to access research and development ( R&D) to explore new opportunities.
CSIRO’s Kick-Start program helps start-ups and small businesses overcome some of these barriers to pursue R&D activities, by providing an end-to-end facilitation service, including:
- help with articulating your research question
- connecting businesses with relevant CSIRO researcher expertise and capability – think of us as you in-house R&D division
- matched funding support to improve the affordability or expand the scope of R&D services.
How does it work?
We realise that engaging in R&D can be a daunting prospect, and your facilitator will drive an end-end R&D process.
- Submit an Expression of Interest DOCX (64 KB) – once you’ve identified if you are eligible for the program, so you can tell us a bit more about your proposed project.
- Matching – Following this, our experienced Kick-Start facilitators will work with your businesses to try and match you with the relevant CSIRO expertise for your project, typically within two to six weeks.
- Project gets underway – once we’ve been able to find you a match, you’ll be invited to submit a full application process to get the project underway.
While the Kick-Start team will do their best to find a match, please note it may not always be possible to find suitable research expertise and or the capability to match the requirement of your R&D project. Where this is the case, we will try our best to support you by helping identify suitable alternatives.
Eligible projects
Your project scope could be anything from:
- Research into a new idea with commercial potential.
- Developing a brand-new product or service with commercial potential to increase your customer base – We helped CannPal discover natural products to promote better health and well-being for companion animals.
- Testing a novel product developed by the company – Wash Wild engaged CSIRO to test four key pathogens used in their cleaning products made from Australian native oils.
Please reach out to the facilitation team below if you’d like to discuss your idea. Our case studies also provide good examples of previous projects we have supported.
How much funding does my company need to provide?
Your company needs to match the funding provided by CSIRO. For example, if we provide funding of $50,000, your business must also provide $50,000. This must be a cash contribution and cannot be in-kind.
Please note funding from CSIRO is not provided directly to your business; it is applied as a voucher to defray the costs associated with accessing CSIRO research and capability.
