As the regional business development agency, Invest Northern Irelands role is to grow the local economy. We do this by helping new and existing businesses to compete internationally, and by attracting new investment to Northern Ireland.
We are part of the Department for the Economy and provide strong government support for business by effectively delivering the Government’s economic development strategies. The team assists businesses to improve their competitiveness and productivity through the better use of knowledge, technology and skills that reside within the Northern Ireland knowledge base.

Invest Northern Ireland via the University Enterprise and Design team also leverages the expertise, R&D capacity and IP of the NI academic base to deliver economic benefits to NI through the Competence Centre, Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) and Proof of Concept (PoC) Programmes.

Competence Centres
A Competence Centre is a group of businesses and researchers coming together to agree and undertake collaborative strategic research of common interest. The research must be market focused and deliver benefits to industry.

Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP)
KTP is a programme designed to help businesses deliver innovative projects by matching business leaders with academic specialists and talented graduates.

Proof of Concept (PoC)
PoC supports the pre-commercialisation of leading-edge technologies emerging from Northern Ireland’s universities.