The Australian Government's Innovation Report

Assisting research to investment ready stage
Commercial Ready
The Commercial Ready programme was announced on 6 May 2004 by the Prime Minister as part of Backing
Australia’s Ability – Building our Future through Science and Innovation.
The programme will provide over $1 billion of funding until 2010-11 (at a rate of approximately $200 million a
year) via competitive grants to small to medium-sized enterprises to support eligible project activities.
Commercial Ready aims to encourage the growth and successful innovation of Australian companies by
increasing the level of research and development, proof-of-concept and early-stage commercialisation by
Australian businesses. Other aims include:
• increasing the international competitiveness of Australian businesses;
• fostering greater collaboration between industry, and industry and research institutions; and
• generating national benefit for the Australian economy.
Commercial Ready is expected to assist around 1700 small to medium-sized enterprises through to 2011. Successful
applicants receive 50% of eligible expenditure for undertaking eligible activities.
It replaces and integrates elements of the previous programmes – the R&D Start Programme, the Biotechnology
Innovation Fund and the Innovation Access Programme.
In 2005-06, Commercial Ready had considered 247 applications. Of those, 165 were approved, totalling
$182.96 million in grant funding. The average grant size was $1.11 million and the median grant size was $0.72
million. Table 7 sets out the size distribution of grants, table 8 the main purposes for which grants were
awarded and table 9 the sectoral distribution of grants.
Table 7: Size distribution of Commercial Ready grants, 2005-06
Size of values Value
Up to $250k $9 692 900
>$250k and $500k and $1m and