Competitive Innovation Fund

Up to $250,000 is available for projects that encourage innovation in high performance sport.

Overview

In 2014–15 the AIS will allocate $1.5 million for the Competitive Innovation Fund.

The fund has been established to encourage innovation in high performance sport, including a greater commitment to investment in coaching-related activities, sport-specific projects and technology initiatives.

Background

Innovation is the application of new solutions that meet new requirements or existing needs. Innovation differs from improvement — innovation does something differently while improvement does the same thing better. Additionally, research generates new knowledge and this will be supported through the soon-to-be-announced High Performance Sport Research Fund.

The Competitive Innovation Fund aims to transform existing knowledge and/or expertise into new and applied outcomes that support Australia’s Winning Edge targets.

Funding will support competitive bids from foundation, prospective and emerging national sporting organisations (NSOs). All NSOs are encouraged to collaborate and partner with the AIS, state institutes and academies of sport, and research and development organisations.

Project proposals must provide evidence of an innovative project or initiative will have a positive impact on sport performance aligned with Australia’s Winning Edge.

Funding

As a guide, projects up to $250,000 will be considered. Only in exceptional circumstances will projects exceeding this amount be considered. Recurring investment over multiple years will be considered.

Where more than one proposal is submitted by a NSO, it should prioritise proposals in order of importance.

Eligible Projects

Coaching

Coaching projects that may be supported under the fund include those which:

facilitate greater integration between groups of high performance personnel
expose developing coaches to best practice, develop their use and integration of support teams in science and technology, and support professional growth in their sport in Australia and internationally
enable cross-sport coaching and high performance collaboration.

Sport-specific projects

Sport-specific projects that may be supported under the fund include those which:

are innovative in nature and typically new to the sport. These projects must have clear alignment with Winning Edge outcomes and regarded as being outside the investment allocation
are seen as cutting-edge in terms of approach, but may have had limited or no previous opportunity to be pursued for implementation and/or trial
introduce innovative processes and systems for high performance outcomes.

Technology innovation

Technology innovation projects that may be supported under the fund include those which:

are innovative, able to demonstrate a positive performance impact and potentially ‘outside’ the scope of existing resources (technology related)
have a multi-sport and/or multi-medal application (system impacting technology related)
demonstrate a clear impact on enhancing the quality of the coaching and/or athlete experience, creating competitive advantages in on-field performance.

Timing

Applications are due by 5pm (AEST) on Monday 18 August 2014.

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