The polytechnic has been awarded $1.5 million from the Tertiary Education Commission's Encouraging and Supporting Innovation fund for its two-year Evolver project.
The project involved selecting concepts for new products ‘‘at their very earliest stage'' and providing their creators with practical assistance and advice co-ordinator Pat Maguire said.
‘‘We are very pleased to get this funding. It will allow us to continue implementing a mode which we have developed over the past two to three years.''
Mr Maguire, the polytechnic's manager of postgraduate students working towards their master of product design enterprise qualifications, said he hoped the business ideas would come from ‘‘our own backyard'' - from polytechnic students, from Otago people involved with other organisations such as the University of Otago and the Upstart business incubator, or from people in the wider community.
Product ideas would begin to be accepted from July, he said.
Once accepted, there would be a five-stage process covering product opportunity research design, business models, copyright, patents, marketing, promotion, branding, the production of prototypes, the development of start-up strategies and approaching potential investors for capital.
An advisory group drawn from organisations such as the Otago Chamber of Commerce, the Dunedin City Council's economic development unit, and New Zealand Trade and Enterprise would help the creators, Mr Maguire said.
In return, creators would pay a percentage of their sales royalties to the polytechnic once their product was launched.
Mr Maguire described the project as ‘‘a bit left field'', but said it was pleasing that the Government was prepared to fund it.