The spin-out register represents a world first, as a comprehensive, transparently and publicly curated, list of all university spin-out companies.
As far as we are aware, no other nation possesses such an asset to understand the role of their universities and spin-outs in their innovation system. We are lucky that our unique starting point was Higher Education Business and Community Interaction survey (HE-BCI) as a mechanism to collect data exhaustively from all UK higher education institutions, but designing a new data collection has been highly technical work.
Spinning out never follows the same path twice, and so defining these ventures with sufficient precision to collect robust national data while leaving enough flexibility for their diversity has required deep consideration with our partners at Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA-Jisc) and Policy Evidence Unit for University Commercialisation and Innovation (UCI) at the University of Cambridge.
This reflects where I see the strengths of Research England – driving forward innovative approaches and bringing together expert voices to answer some of the most difficult questions.
But the register is more than just a list of companies. I think it is important in defining two things:
- “the ground truth” – the official baseline to capture the absolute output of our universities to enable international benchmarking, evaluation of trends and aggregation of activity to see sector-level achievements
- “the common denominator” – the constant that enables companies to be identified in other datasets, pulling out even richer data and stories from elsewhere
At Research England we want to not just improve the quality and types of knowledge exchange data available, but we want to drive forward more sophisticated and nuanced data systems in knowledge exchange. We believe the key to this is interoperable datasets, to increase the value and minimise the collection burden of both new and existing datasets. The register provides a flagship example of this.
Driving deeper insights and stories
By telling the stories of universities and their spin-outs better, we can build engagement in the economic growth that universities deliver, and illuminate the pathways for others to follow. The journeys of spin-out companies and their relationships with their universities are diverse, and often unique.
Previously data has been patchy and only been available at the university level, where one or two companies with very specific characteristics or pathways could be masking the breadth of many types of other valuable ventures and their contributions. The register provides company-level information and therefore the ability understand the story of each company.
We are now only at the start of delving into this richness of data. Our expert national knowledge exchange advisors at the Policy Evidence Unit for UCI have provided just a taste of the insights the register can unlock through a flagship analytical report. And it is important that we pay attention to both the success stories and signs of more concerning developments, for a full view of this complex ecosystem.
These initial findings, also published today, celebrate and provide evidence of the importance and prevalence of university spin-out companies within the wider startup population. The findings highlight varying levels of sector engagement, with university spin-outs comprising 70% of the top 20 life science startups by investment raised but only 5% of equivalent software startups.
The spin-out register is intended as a resource for all. Different stakeholders may use it for different purposes, they may do different analyses, and they may come to different conclusions. The topic of spinning out is characterised by diverse and vigorous viewpoints. But if we all start from a common dataset, then we may more easily find our points of difference and alignment.
The principle of transparency in our approach is key to enabling this – transparency in the definitions and qualities of data included, and transparency in the approaches taken to curating the published register.
A development journey led by partnership
Our work, as part of Research England’s national knowledge exchange metrics programme, is underpinned by working in partnership with the deep expertise of both HESA-Jisc and the Policy Evidence Unit for UCI. As a novel endeavour, we are still learning and identifying ways to further enhance the register and its data for its future annual iterations. We are not trying to find quick fixes but build more sustainable and sophisticated data for the long-term, and working in partnership with the expertise of others is key to this.
I also want to recognise the instrumental role of our universities in getting us as a sector to this point. The register is only possible and only carries the weight that it does because of the rigorous data collection that universities have conducted this year to underpin it. The continued engagement with institutions will be important as we continue to iterate and refine the quality of the data in this new and important resource to fulfil its potential.
Looking ahead and celebrating success
This is just the first step in our plans to drive forwards the quality of data and evidence that is vital to us to inform policy, practice, and our funding. Our ambition is also to be able to use deeper and more diverse ranges of commercialisation metrics in our funding approach, and the register is key to unlocking this.
Once everyone has a chance to digest and explore the possibilities for what the register can offer, we will host a national conference in the autumn. We want to celebrate this important milestone, the successes in university spinning out, and discuss the challenges and opportunities for how we can continue to better evidence this important role of universities in the UK innovation system.