Eleven creative and digital businesses in Glasgow have won £620,000 between them to help develop innovative new products and services.

They are winners in a funding competition, The Digital and Creative Clyde Launchpad, launched in January by the UK's innovation agency the Technology Strategy Board in partnership with Creative Clyde.

Among their innovative ideas for new products are a digital tag for wireless monitoring and security applications, a 3D virtual reality technology that creates branding and training experiences, and computer games rendering technology that will help make feature films easier and cheaper to produce.

The launchpad is designed to accelerate the expansion of digital and creative businesses and help develop the growing community of creative businesses in Glasgow.

The competition was open to SMEs and after a series of competitive rounds, the 11 companies have been offered up to 60% funding for their projects to a maximum of £60,000 per project.

The companies now have six months to court other investors and funders to gain match funding to enable them to go ahead.

Matthew Brown, lead technologist for the creative industries at the Technology Strategy Board said: "The idea of a launchpad is to draw companies, investment and people into the digital and creative cluster and encourage networking and cooperation. SMEs that might not be able to develop a product without support can get funding for R&D projects, but we also want to help the whole cluster grow."

David Smith, director of creative industries at Scottish Enterprise said: "The news that 11 companies 
have been successful in attracting this significant support is fantastic, not just for the individual companies but for the whole Creative Clyde area. Launchpad is designed to help these companies and others to raise their level of innovation and build their competitive advantage"

He added: "As a vibrant, collaborative business environment and home to many media, technology and creatively minded businesses, Creative Clyde is a great place to make this happen".

The 11 winners are Connect-in, Axis Productions, Market App, Streamba, Screenmedia Design, Front Page, Creative Training Unlimited, Distrify, Stem Cloud, Dimensional Imaging and We Are Snook.