Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

EMPOWER's mission is to integrate creative, empathic user-centred design techniques with genuinely novel product design innovation. The current problems are:(i) users feel disengaged with the bland, utilitarian, and non-user friendly design of many existing energy control and feedback interfaces which could impact upon their general disengagement with energy efficiency; (ii) users are not aware of the connections between their decisions and energy use; (iii) designers do not know enough about user behaviour in the context of energy usage There is a gap in the market for novel and exciting beautifully designed, high-end energy control and feedback interfaces. EMPOWER's work packages will begin with ethnographic workplace studies of users' interactions with energy and decision making processes, and drill down into detailed user insights and users' mental models. These insights will underpin a series of highly iterative and novel participatory design workshops within workplaces, with users and stakeholders. The outcomes of the workshops will drive the product development process. The final outcome will be an innovative user-driven energy efficiency product, which can be commercially exploited beyond the end of the project. The project is supported by More Associates' CarbonCulture behaviour-change delivery and research platform and an ongoing collaboration with the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) provide 60 per cent of UK private sector employment (BEIS, 2020) and young and scaling new firms create a disproportionate share of all new jobs (Anyadike-Danes and Hart, 2017, 2018). Effective policy to support entrepreneurship and SMEs will therefore be critical to sustaining employment and rebuilding prosperity in 2021 and beyond. Supporting business dynamism will also be important for maintaining inclusive growth in poorer and more remote parts of the UK. Rebuilding strength in the economy also creates opportunities to implement policies to pivot SMEs towards net zero, emphasising innovation and investment in low carbon technologies and business models. Our research and impact proposals - developed in consultation with policy makers - aim to support these national policy priorities - rebuilding growth, net zero and levelling-up - through an ambitious programme of research, knowledge curation and engagement. Previous research has shown that new and young firms are responsible for most of the job creation and innovation in a country and ultimately drive growth and prosperity (Anyadike-Danes and Hart, 2018). Entrepreneurship has also been proposed as a key route thorough which societies can combat sustainability challenges such as climate change and inequalities (Frese et al., 2016; Gras et al., 2020; Shepherd & Patzelt, 2011). Our future research programme builds on these observations while recognising that sustainable business models which address social and environmental challenges as well as creating economic value - a 'triple bottom line approach' - involve potential trade-offs between priorities and increases decision-making complexity (Belz & Binder, 2017). Indeed, sustainable entrepreneurs tend to face greater challenges (Pinkse & Groot, 2015) and perceive greater financial, administrative and information-based barriers to starting their ventures than regular entrepreneurs (Hoogendoorn et al., 2019). Policy measures designed to support SMEs' moves towards net zero face similar complexity and potential trade-offs. Reflecting these challenges, our research programme is organised into four Work Packages which reflect key areas of policy development - rebuilding strength, international competitiveness and enabling the dual transition. WP1, led by Prof Mark Hart (Aston), focuses on building strong and resilient enterprises with a focus on longitudinal data analysis and the diversity of entrepreneurs. WP 2, led Dr Kevin Mole (Warwick) focuses on the enablers of innovation with a specific focus on national and local policy supporting the digital and net zero transitions. WP3, led by Prof Stephen Roper (Warwick) focuses on the implementation of innovation within the firm focusing on low carbon and digital innovation in SMEs and their relationship with business performance. WP4, led by Prof Jun Du (Aston), focuses on SME internationalisation, the relationship to growth and productivity, and the impact of different localities' extent of international engagement. Three horizontal themes link each of the WPs: a focus on policy-relevant research topics and developing actionable recommendations; a concern with spatial disparities in SME growth and productivity; and, a clear differentiation between performance drivers in different sub-groups of the population of SMEs (i.e., by firm type, location and the characteristics of the owner-management team - the latter to permit analysis of diversity and inclusiveness). The research programme will be complemented by a programme of knowledge curation and engagement activities outlined in the case for support.

The technological developments in electronics over the last decade has been demonstrated by the evolution in the smartphone which has transformed how we interact with each other and the infrastructure. With Arm and Imagination Technologies, the UK has been at the centre of this innovation with some developments emerging directly from the university sector. A similar revolution is now expected as we face the challenge of applying innovative sensor technology and embedded solutions to a wider range of applications. For this to happen, a multidisciplinary approach as proposed here, is required such that electronic developments match the challenging environment issues that pharmaceutical, chemical, agriculture applications bring. The electronics systems industry is worth £100B for the UK economy and represents 3% of the total UK workforce. A lot of this activity is at the high end of the value chain, highlighting the need for advanced design skills and innovative manufacturing processes. Thus, there is a clear need to supply a dependable number of high-quality, postgraduate-qualified staff for this industry as much of this activity is specialist either in the form of start-up companies such as Gold Standard Simulations (GSS) Ltd., or existing major industries such as ARM, IQE etc.. The UK has had a internationally-recognised but relatively small, electronics systems academic base which acts to support this activity. For the past three years, the eFutures network has played a critical role in uniting this academic base and engaging with UK industry. As of 2018, the network had a healthy membership of 450 and had organised an exciting and successful range of networking events. It has acted to strengthen links with the electronics industry, increase the number of ECRs and engage with EPSRC. However, there is a clear need to have a new and revised networking activity to address new challenges as we start to explore the potential wider applications of electronics. With the increasing diversity of use of electronics in industries such as food, biotechnology, sensors, etc.., new types of technologies and innovative electronic systems need to be created. To address this, there needs to be a concerted effort to bring down barriers and encourage the electronic systems community to engage and collaborate with researchers from these disciplines and vice-versa. As a result of the activities in this proposal, we would like to envisage that they would be 12 new major collaborations that exist due to our efforts. In addition to exploring new avenues, it is important to both strengthen and grow the current network. Whilst the improvement in ECR engagement can be viewed as an eFutures success, the trials of academic administrative challenges and the numerous company possibilities can result in loss of ECRs. This will have a highly detrimental impact on not only the UK's research base but on the education of future suitably-qualified, engineering students. Moreover, it is vital that there is a national community to support them and indeed to support MCRs in their continued development and their interaction with researchers, industry and funding bodies. The purpose of this proposal is to address all of these key concerns by creating a new networking activity called eFutures2. Using a number of meeting formats and use of multidisciplinary scoping exercises, The network will act to double in size and create a number of major interdisciplinary collaborations directly attributable to eFutures2. To achieve this exciting agenda, we have brought together a younger, stronger and more diverse team of investigators which reflects greater age, gender and ethnicity balance. The true measures of success of the network will be an increase in the volume of active researchers in electronic systems and an increase in the number of multidisciplinary EPSRC, commercial and EU grants.