The launch of the UK university spin-out register marks a transformative leap in how we understand and support innovation emerging from higher education.This offers, for the first time, a comprehensive and dynamic view of every active spin-out company across the country.
It was developed as part of our National Knowledge Exchange Metrics Programme with Jisc and our national knowledge exchange metrics advisors, the Policy Evidence Unit for University Commercialisation and Innovation (UCI). It captures the scale and diversity of the world-leading technologies and entrepreneurial talent emerging from our higher education sector.
It is an international first, and maintains the strength of the UK’s knowledge exchange evidence base as globally leading.
From register to insight: a strategic vision
While the register itself is a major achievement, it is just the first step. It brings us closer to our ambitions for a strategic spin-out dashboard. This dashboard will help us better understand the health of the spin-out ecosystem and support decision-making across government, academia and industry.
Today, I’m pleased to announce the publication of our ‘Data Digest’, a report that showcases the potential of this new data resource by pulling together key insights, case studies, and a set of curated data visualisations.
Insights unlocked
The register is already helping us see the scale and breadth of spin-out activity. In June 2025, UCI, as our national knowledge exchange metrics advisors, published a flagship report. Providing expert advice on how the rich data unlocked by the spin-out register can be turned into more meaningful measures of success.
We are building on this to unlock the register’s full potential, to make these findings available for exploration in a strategic spin-out dashboard. A dynamic platform that turns complex data into clear and readily available insights for all. It will help us answer the key questions about UK’s spin-out ecosystem.
What are the key questions that need answering?
As a sector we are faced with the clear challenge to drive forwards economic growth. And commercialising novel technologies by spinning out high-impact and scalable firms is a key contribution to the growth agenda. As part of addressing this challenge, we need solid evidence to answer some fundamental questions about the health of spinning out such as:
- how is the intensity of spinning out distributed across regions and types of university?
- how do university spin-outs compare to the wider start-up population in terms of growth pathways and overall success?
- to what extent are university spin-out companies focusing their research and development efforts in the UK? How does the stickiness of companies compare across regions and strategically important sectors?
- how strong is the UK’s performance? And are we being judged against fair international benchmarks?
- do we understand what drives success across different growth pathways and what causes failure, so that we know where to improve?
Measuring and driving success
These questions are complex, and answering them requires a careful, evidence-led approach. I want to stress that our goal isn’t simply to count spin-outs, it’s to understand their journey, how they grow, where they thrive and what support they need. New insights will enable us to target our public funding to achieve the strongest possible impact: to strengthen university spin-outs to deliver more high-quality jobs in every region.
Our vision is to distil available data into a strategic dashboard that is:
- accessible – to diverse stakeholder communities
- focused on what matters – tracking the features that truly drive success
- grounded – in evidence and designed for long-term use
Our aim is to highlight:
- the key achievements – what success looks like in practice across a diversity of spin-out pathways.
- internal drivers of success – the factors within both universities that support high-impact companies
- external critical conditions – the enablers and blockers in the wider ecosystem that drive success
Previous work by UCI has identified that the drivers of and pathways to spinning out are many and various, as spin-outs themselves are very diverse. Therefore, we must be selective in the design of the dashboard, so we track the features that really matter and get a clear picture. A new report exploring conceptual underpinnings to such a dashboard, published by UCI in November 2025, sets out exactly this, and has been crucial in our thinking behind a dashboard so far.
Building on solid foundations
Some of the groundwork needed is already in place.
We already play a lynchpin role in both defining, with Jisc, what we should be measuring in England and also using this data to produce insights. Research England publishes annually a report on IP-related and commercialisation activities in England based on existing data from the Higher Education Business and Community Interaction (HE-BCI) survey to understand trends in university achievements. This includes understanding this in the context of our most frequent international comparator in the US and where data is often most readily available.
With the new data from the spin-out register, this is unlocking much more. The next step is to link in richer indicators such as investment and employment data, and wider information on regional and sectoral economic trends.
This will help us piece together different stages of commercialisation pathways such as patents and licensing, and connections to public interventions including UKRI funding. I believe that by bringing these strands together, an annual dashboard can become an important tool for informing the national conversation about our real progress, what really drives it, and where we could be doing more.
A phased approach to delivery
We are rolling out the dashboard out in two main stages.
A static ‘Data Digest’ report – offering a set of curated graphs to highlight five key insights and currently available indicators of how spin-out activity has evolved since 2012-13.
A fully interactive dashboard (in development, to be published in 2026) – a dynamic platform for deeper analysis, with future iterations aiming to integrate wider datasets for the exploration of performance drivers.
Our report published today sets a clear marker for our fuller ambition. There is much more that is possible, and much more that we want to achieve, but this is an important first step.
Looking ahead
This work reflects the values that guide our approach: transparency, collaboration, and a commitment to continuous improvement. As we move forward, we remain focused on enabling better decisions, supporting innovation and ensuring that the UK’s spin-out ecosystem continues to thrive.
We are building not just a dashboard, but a shared resource – one that supports long-term relationships, informs policy and helps us understand what truly drives success.
Ellen Bamford is Associate Director of Knowledge Exchange (KE) Data and Evidence at Research England.
She is responsible for overseeing the KE policy team, working with the Director of KE, alongside the Associate Director of Knowledge Exchange Strategic Projects and Partnerships.
The team supports the higher education sector to enhance its work with businesses, public sector and local communities for the benefit of the economy and society.
The work of the team includes:
- the allocation of formula funding through Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF)
- competitive funding such as the Connecting Capability Fund, which complements HEIF by supporting higher education provider collaboration in commercialisation
- evidencing and driving high quality KE by leading the design, analysis, and use of KE data and metrics, through a designated national metrics programme, and support of the HESA-led HE-BCI survey for England.
- wider policy work to support best practice and performance measurement including development of the Knowledge Exchange Framework
Ellen has a degree and masters in Chemistry from Durham University.
Previous roles include positions in the KE team since joining Research England in 2020, and previously in the Impact team at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.