NESTA

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This page is about a UK organization. For the Italian football (soccer) player, see Alessandro Nesta.

The National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts is an endowment in the United Kingdom established by an Act of Parliament in 1998 to help maximise the UK's creative and innovative potential. NESTA's mission is to transform the UK’s capacity for innovation by investing in early stage companies, informing innovation policy and encouraging a culture that helps innovation to flourish.

NESTA operates in 3 core areas:

Investing in Innovation: Combining non-financial support with seed-stage funding, NESTA invests in innovative companies through either direct investment (NESTA Ventures) or through indirect investment via 3rd-party funds (NESTA Capital)

Innovation Programmes: NESTA's Innovation Programmes aim to demonstrate how to support and stimulate innovation. NESTA operates a variety of programmes which instil the skills & attitudes required for innovation, develop business support for creative entrepreneurs, explore models of Open Innovation and use incentives to stimulate innovative solutions to societal issues.

Informing Innovation: The NESTA Policy & Research Unit works to shape policy and practice in the UK and around the world by combining research with experience on the ground. The NPRU aims to increase the quality and quantity of research in innovation, develop outstanding innovation policy, and build a national network of leading thinkers in innovation.

Funded by a £250 million endowment from the UK National Lottery, it uses the interest arising from that endowment to fund and support innovation in science, technology and the arts. In the last financial year (April 2005 to March 2006) NESTA invested almost £22m on backing promising ideas and funding new ventures.