The Ignite Ideas Fund provides grants to support startups and small to medium Queensland businesses to commercialise market-ready innovative ideas, products, processes or services.
The key objective of this evaluation was to assess the extent to which Ignite Ideas Fund enabled the commercialisation of ideas, and the flow-on benefits to Queensland, over and above what would have happened anyway. It was also required to determine the extent to which the program contributes to the overarching Advance Queensland objectives.
The evaluation follows on from a Recipient Research survey in May 2018, and Process Review, in late 2018, conducted internally by the then Department of Innovation and Tourism Industry Development (DITID).
Findings of the evaluation informed future rounds of the Ignite Ideas Fund, as well as other programs and activities aimed at supporting innovation in small and medium enterprises.
Key findings
The evaluation found evidence that the Ignite Ideas Fund increased the probability of success for recipients, generating more revenue and profit compared to applicants who did not receive a grant.
Key findings include:
- Recipients progressed their idea to a greater extent, and were statistically significantly more likely to achieve an increase in employment, revenue and profit. Better outcomes for recipients is also true in the regions, particularly when it comes to employment. Additionally, businesses with at least one female founder had a higher probably of success than those with all male founders.
- Controlling for other logical contributors to success to isolate the effect of the grant, receiving the grant is associated with the probability of generating revenue being increased by 30% (to 57% probability) and generating profit by 9% (to 14% probability). Without the grant, 21% of recipients would not have continued with their project and 66% report they would have gone more slowly, raising the risk of failure.
- More than 50% of recipients increased paid hours of existing staff in Queensland, by an average of 40 hours/week across existing FTE, and 59% of recipients generated new jobs. 83% of recipients reported Ignite Ideas assisted them to established leads in Australia.
Report
Read the Ignite Ideas Fund Evaluation report (PDF, 1.5Mb).
