"I’m constantly contacted by innovators with either a panacea for all the network ills, or a brilliant solution to a problem I don’t have."
Feeling a little sorry for my Innovation Manager friend after a catch-up and not wanting good innovators to miss their big chance, I’ve penned the below 5-minute guide for how innovation funding works and how innovators can design proposals that funders say yes to.
Innovation proposals don’t fail because the solution isn’t clever enough – they fail because they aren’t ‘right side up’. They start from a product, not from the problems and constraints of the specific networks they’re meant to help. When that happens then even brilliant ideas can end up in the ‘what could have been’ pile rather than delivering real value for customers.
Earlier this month I had the chance to speak at the University of Oxford’s IMAD26 event on energy network innovation funding. I focused on what networks actually need from innovators, and why proposals that succeed look very different from the generic ‘my AI/blockchain/platform can solve everything’ pitch. This post is a written version of that talk and a practical guide for anyone trying to get Network Innovation Allowance (NIA) and the Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) funding over the line.
What is ‘right side up’ innovation?
‘Right side up’ innovation starts from the client, not the product. It means innovating around the real constraints, pain points, and priorities of a specific network and its customers, rather than trying to bend those realities around a prebuilt solution.
Three questions sit at the heart of this:
How does the network currently deal (or not deal) with the issue you’re targeting?
You need to understand the status quo, including the messy workarounds, spreadsheets, and manual interventions that never appear in a glossy strategy document. If your proposal doesn’t clearly improve on today’s reality, it will struggle to justify the disruption and cost of change.
In most cases you’re approaching the problems from outside the network organisation so there will be natural limits to how much you can find out without speaking to people in the network. In a perfect world you’ll discuss the idea with the relevant people within a network. The best innovations are often co-created.
What past innovation projects already exist, and which elements have become BAU?
Networks have been innovating under NIA and its predecessors for years. If you ignore that legacy, or worse, propose something that duplicates prior work, you show that you haven’t done your homework. Building on existing tools, processes, and learning is usually more persuasive than promising a clean sweep.
Imagine if someone told you they could make your life 10% better but you’d have to change everything; you’re probably not going to take them up on it.
How does your innovation interact with user needs and benefit the end customer?
Keeping the lights on always comes first, but innovation funding and RIIO business plans are ultimately judged on customer impact. Do you reduce interruptions, make connections faster, support vulnerable customers, or cut costs on bills? Customer benefits often flow through to network benefits, but you have to describe that chain explicitly.
If your proposal isn’t rooted in real network needs and customer outcomes, then it is, however sophisticated, just noise.
Navigating NIA, SIF and ENA Basecamp
In GB, the two big funding routes for network innovation are NIA and SIF, with the ENA Innovation Basecamp acting as a very helpful matchmaking layer. Across projects funded between 2023 and 2026, around 68% of registered network innovation projects were funded through NIA and 32% through SIF, reflecting the fact that SIF only launched in 2023 but is already a significant part of the landscape.
NIA is the workhorse. Each network has its own NIA pot and can start projects at any time which makes it more flexible and accessible for many innovators. Flexible but not necessarily small; NIA has funded a reasonably even and broad range of project sizes up to £1m, with 51 projects above £1m, so can support anything from targeted feasibility work to substantial near‑deployment trials.
SIF is more selective and more structured. It sets explicit challenges that networks must address, and applications are only accepted in set windows each year. Funding is organised into three broad “tiers”: under £150k, £150–500k, and multi‑million projects. It is harder to access than NIA, but it’s better suited for large, staged projects that need real scale and have a clear path from discovery through to deployment.
The SIF challenges themselves are GB‑wide and inevitably high‑level. Round 5, for example, covered seven different themes ranging from dynamic modelling to green gas and whole‑system optimisation. The trap many innovators fall into is stopping at this level: they align their generic solution to a generic challenge and assume that’s enough.
This is why ENA Innovation Basecamp is so useful. It gathers problem statements from networks, written by people close to delivery, and makes them visible to innovators. Those statements translate high‑level SIF challenges into concrete issues networks are grappling with today and as the energy system transitions. They’re an open invitation to tailor your proposal which you ignore at your peril.
Basecamp is not the only route into networks as you can (and should) approach networks directly outside it. But if networks have taken the time to tell you, in their own words, what they’re struggling with, there’s really no excuse for not tailoring your proposal and how you communicate it.
Tailoring to individual networks
Even when networks share the same SIF challenge headline, their underlying realities can be very different. That’s why innovators need to think in terms of ‘specific problem, specific solution’ not ‘one product to rule them all.’
Take data maturity: Some networks are already highly digitised, with rich operational data, advanced analytics, and established platforms. Others have patchier data, legacy systems, and more manual processes. A proposal that assumes a fully integrated, clean data environment will look naive in the latter case, no matter how impressive the tech.
Alternatively, consider network capacity and the regional context: In some areas deindustrialisation has left large amounts of spare capacity that can be repurposed; in others there are tight constraints driven by high levels of distributed generation, rapid demand growth, or pockets of social deprivation (networks exist to serve a customer need, sometimes their problems are a lot more human than technical). These differences matter. They affect where trials should be run, which customers are involved, and what success looks like.
Tailoring in practice means:
- Designing your trial around the specific network’s constraints, customers, and assets
- Being explicit about how your solution builds on past innovation work and how it will interface with networks’ existing BAU systems and processes
- Showing you understand their local challenges: whether the network is more concerned with constraints management, heat decarbonisation, connections backlogs, or vulnerability
Innovation is inherently risky, if it doesn’t come with the risk of failure then it probably isn’t innovation, but like any decent PM will know, risks can be managed. Targeting a specific problem in a specific network reduces delivery risks, makes benefits easier to evidence, and often reveals additional opportunities to improve the wider system. No innovation is an island; it will interact with other processes, markets, and technologies whether you plan for it or not.
Designing projects funders will approve
Once you’re thinking ‘right side up’, the structure of your project is the next lever.
Start by being realistic about scale. If you’re at an early concept or proof‑of‑concept stage, a small discovery or feasibility phase; likely in the sub‑£150k bracket; may be more credible than jumping straight to a multi‑million deployment. When I’m assessing SIF applications and see the innovator has a staged approach with clear gates it shows not only an appreciation for the risk and uncertainty involved (and there should be risks, this is innovation after all) but that they’ve properly thought about the practical project delivery from the network’s perspective.
As your idea matures and the value case is clearer, a £150–500k project might be the sweet spot for a robust trial, especially under NIA. For larger, high‑impact ideas with a strong evidence base, multi‑million SIF projects become realistic but they will be scrutinised heavily on delivery risk, scalability, and customer benefit.
The quality of the narrative matters as much as the numbers. Strong proposals tend to be:
- Concise and clear about the problem they address
- Concrete in explaining how the solution is innovative and why it improves on current practice
- Explicit about user needs and how benefits flow through to end customers
- Thoughtful in choosing partners and subcontractors, with a clear logic for who is involved and why
Weaker proposals often fall down in exactly these areas. They talk at length about the technology, but only vaguely about users. They bring in partners who look good on a slide but are tangential to the problem. They assert benefits rather than tracing them from customer experience through to network performance and, ultimately, bills.
A ‘right side up’ application, in contrast, reads like a well‑structured investigation: it starts from a real network problem, shows how the idea interacts with BAU and prior innovation, quantifies customer outcomes as far as possible, and uses the funding mechanism in a way that de‑risks rather than amplifies uncertainty.
Closing reflections and an invitation
The energy system transition is raising the bar for everyone involved. Operational resilience is more critical than ever, with more DERs, more data, less certain climate, and greater risk of cyberattacks. All whilst managing costs in a world where almost all investment ultimately lands with bill payers. Innovators need pathways to prove and scale genuinely useful ideas, not just clever prototypes. The gap between those needs is not mainly about creativity, it’s about alignment. Proposals succeed when they are ‘right side up’: grounded in the specific challenges, contexts, and customers of the networks they aim to serve, and structured in a way that lets funders say yes with confidence.
If you’re working on something for NIA, SIF, or beyond, my suggestion is simple: pick one network, one problem, and rebuild your proposition from there. The technology will still matter but the chances of it actually being adopted will increase dramatically.
I spend much of my time working on network innovation projects, bridging the gap between networks and innovators so get to see the failures on both sides, and if I’m doing my job well, help reframe propositions and reshape project designs early on.
If the ideas in this post resonate with you or if you are working through the challenge of making innovation truly network-led, feel free to get in touch.
