29th October 2025

Tomas Coates Ulrichsen and Leonard Kelleher

Download the report here

Download a high-resolution version of the framework here

Accelerating economic growth and tackling long-standing productivity challenges in the UK is a central mission for the UK Government. Funding bodies and agencies across government, including those of universities and knowledge exchange (KE) such as Research England, are examining how they can invest to support the delivery of this mission.

To support their efforts, Research England asked the Policy Evidence Unit for University Commercialisation and Innovation (UCI), as their national advisors on KE metrics, to (1) develop a framework for capturing where and how universities, through KE, can play a significant role in helping the government deliver on its economic growth mission; (2) reflect on what success could look like; and (3) identify possible indicators that could capture – at the national-level – whether impacts are being felt and progress is being made.

Today we publish our report University knowledge exchange for economic growth: A framework for guiding understanding and evidencing success. The report presents our university KE for economic growth framework, along with our view of what success looks like and possible indicators that could capture progress. These indicators draw on what we know about existing data sources in this space, however in some areas we do not believe sufficiently focused (or any!) data exists that could provide such insights. This may require additional data collection efforts.

Further detail on UCI’s university KE for economic growth framework

Adopting a competitiveness lens – of sectors, places and organisations – our framework seeks to unpack economic growth into key drivers where we would expect universities, through their wide range of KE efforts with external partners, to contribute. We isolate the following key dimensions:

• Commercialising and scaling knowledge and technologies to create new sources of wealth
• Supporting companies to innovate, compete and scale for the benefit of the UK
• Enabling people to participate and engage productively in the economy
• Strengthening system-wide growth drivers and easing bottlenecks that power place/sector competitiveness to better enable organisations to innovate, compete and scale for the benefit of the UK

Much attention is rightly on realising the potential and building the competitiveness of frontier sectors (which include both manufacturing and service sectors). However, we must also recognise the urgent need to increase the competitiveness and productivity of legacy and other sectors (including foundational industries and the foundational economy) that employ large numbers of people across the towns, regions and nations of the UK. Facing very different barriers to innovation and growth, these sectors have an important role to play in delivering growth that is felt across the country.

Each of these sectors will have their own structures and dynamics, value chains, opportunities and challenges, and conditions. Combined with the available resources and capabilities of the university (or group of universities working collaboratively) and their partners, these differences will shape where and how universities can contribute through KE to help sectors, places and organisations become more competitive, and to help people become more engaged and productive in the labour market.

In developing the framework, we recognise that the impacts of KE may be felt directly by companies and others, by universities working with partners to develop solutions to meet their specific needs and advance opportunities. In addition, some impacts may be felt more indirectly, through universities helping partners in the private and public sectors to explore where and how they can intervene to strengthen the economic system.

It is also important to note that, in each of our core dimensions, different forms of KE – from collaborative and contract research, to spinouts and IP licensing, training, access to facilities and equipment, consultancy, networks and others – may play an important role for channelling and exchanging knowledge to realise impacts.

In publishing this framework, our hope is to increase our understanding of where and how universities, through KE, can play a significant role in delivering the UK Government’s growth mission.