Scottish Enterprise's Proof of Concept Fund supports the pre-commercialisation of leading-edge technologies emerging from Scotland's universities, research institutes and NHS Trusts. It aims to exploit research advances and encourage Scottish innovation, helping researchers to export their ideas and inventions from the lab to the global marketplace.

Projects can be typically defined as occurring after advances made during curiosity-driven or strategic research. This is usually after a background patent has been filed, but before full lab-scale demonstration of the technology, any pre-production development/prototyping or commercial funds for development have been made available. Successful applicants must demonstrate that their ideas have originality and true commercial potential. Ideas should have the potential to form the basis of either a new high growth business or a license to an existing company.