ON Prime

ON Prime is a free program designed to help research teams of two to six people take their projects to the next level through customer discovery activities and more. We work with researchers at any stage of their project across all disciplines.

During the nine weeks of ON Prime, you will develop a deeper understanding of the people who could benefit the most from your research and sharpen skills to communicate with that audience.

Expert facilitators will support you to build evidence for the impact of your research, so you can make a difference in the world and attract the resources you need along the way. Remotely delivered sessions are spaced out approximately two weeks apart and you should allocate additional time between sessions to undertake stakeholder engagement activities.

What teams will get out of ON Prime

Every team's pathway is different, so what your team gets out of ON Prime will depend on what you are seeking to achieve.

Outcomes from teams in recent years include:

• attracting new funding sources
• establishing new partnerships
• increasing industry engagement
• improving clarity around the impact and focus of their research
• increasing confidence communicating their research
• forming team bonds in a new project group
• licensing IP or creating a new start-up venture.

Who can participate in ON Prime

To participate in ON Prime, you must apply with a team of two to six people. Only one person needs to be a researcher at an Australian research organisation. The rest of your team may include anyone else you think will add value to your team, for example:

• your colleagues
• people from other research organisations
• community representatives
• industry partners
• university students
• someone from your organisation involved in research services, tech transfer, communications.

If you are a small team, think about who else you could involve in ON Prime to strengthen your group.

All team members should be based in Australia for the duration of the program.

How ON Prime is delivered

ON Prime is currently delivered online in six days of facilitated sessions. The sessions are spread over nine weeks, with the first two days in the first week, and then a day every second week. You'll meet with your allocated innovation mentor between the sessions.

What time commitment is required?

The program requires moderate effort and allocation from teams.

Each team member should allocate at least 1 day per week allocation for nine weeks.

Next sessions

The current round of ON Prime is running from May to July 2022. Applications for this round have now closed.

This round of ON Prime is aligned to our Future Protein and Drought Resilience missions.

Future Protein

The world will need to produce more protein, more sustainably, from more sources into the future. The goal of our Future Protein Mission is to leverage the increasing global demand for high quality protein and create new Australian protein products and ingredients that earn an additional $10 billion in revenue by 2030. Science and industry need to create new value-added products, production and food waste innovations through new technologies, processes and business models to make the most of high-value market opportunities.

For this round of ON Prime we are particularly interested in teams who are working on:

• scalable, innovative protein production systems. This includes, but is not limited to precision fermentation (scalable production of functional ingredients) or biomass fermentation (e.g. fungal mycelia, microbial biomass, algae).
• creative re-uses of food, that would otherwise fail to reach their full value potential or go to waste, as high value protein products (across all protein sectors: meat, aquaculture, plant, insect, other).
• the modulation of high protein crops to deliver unique flavour and nutritional profiles and modified texture/functionality. This can be achieved via unique germplasm (input end) or innovative food processing (output end).

For this intake of ON Prime we will not consider:

• waste solutions that are not product-driven
• solutions that are not directly suitable for Australian industry (but you can consider how will this deliver impact outside Australia)
• solutions that will take more than four to five years to deliver impact (i.e. aiming for near-term impact).

Drought Resilience

Regional Australia faces perennial weather extremes, such as droughts, floods, heatwaves, and frosts. However, the frequency and severity of these events are predicted to increase, straining the ability of Australia’s regional communities and industries to thrive. By building drought resilience, we are contributing towards a stronger regional Australia, equipped to successfully live and operate in our dynamic and changing world.

Our Drought Resilience Mission  aims to reduce the negative impacts of drought by 30 per cent by 2030. This aim will be realised by working with others to deliver improved drought resilience via on-farm solutions; regional community solutions; and enabling policy development.

We are particularly interested in accelerating the progress of teams who are working on ways to support farmers and regional communities to improve planning, decision-making and actions under uncertain weather and climatic conditions and in the face of more frequent dry periods.

We are interested in teams who are:

• developing adaptations and options that build knowledge and understanding of future risk and uncertainty
• building individual and regional capacity to plan for future droughts through new adaptations and options that will help manage through future droughts, and recover faster from drought.

We want to accelerate the development of solutions that will deliver productivity and profitability outcomes, improved environmental and natural resource outcomes as well as social outcomes.

For this intake of ON Prime while use of genetic tools are in scope, solutions aimed at breeding will not be considered.

How to apply

Applying to participate in ON Prime is a simple, two-step process:

1. Submit an online application
   Each team is required to register via the online application portal then submit an application. Access to the portal will be made available when applications open.
2. Application review and evaluation
   At the closure of the application period, all applications will be reviewed by representatives of their lead organisation. This is to ensure that each team has engaged their sponsoring institute and has full support to participate in the program.

Each application is evaluated by multiple experts from our extended network. The highest rated applications will be selected and invited to participate in ON Prime.

Applications are evaluated against how clearly they have articulated the following points:

• solution and value proposition for their idea
• the problem that their idea addresses
• the identified end-users of customers of their idea

Successful teams will be notified approximately four weeks after the application closing date. Applicants who do not successfully progress to ON Prime will be provided with access to detailed feedback from the evaluation process to help them refine and continue to work on their ideas.

Have a question?

If you have questions about ON Prime, please contact us on email [email protected]