24th September 2024

Joscelyn Miller

Today, UCI have published a new report, written in partnership with Research England, setting out the vision and approach for developing a system to improve university spinout data using a Spinout Register.

Read the report 

UCI’s recent reports on spinouts – Busting Myths and Moving Forward & Spinning out Success – have shown the realities of a complex process that underpins the journey from research to commercial application, as well as the crucial role spinouts play in driving innovation across strategically important sectors for the UK economy. There are clear benefits to being able to understand the health and performance of the UK university spinout ecosystem using data-led insights, informing the work of funders like Research England, policymakers, and others seeking to strengthen the UK's performance in producing and nurturing spinouts.

At present, our ability to do this is held back by a lack of suitable data. The UK’s Higher Education Business and Community Interaction (HE-BCI) survey – maintained by HESA – is currently the only source of data on spin-outs that has complete university coverage nationally and is publicly available. However, limitations during the collection phase of HE-BCI are known to lead to inaccuracies and significant gaps when the data is used to develop metrics to assist with policy and funding design, and where data might assist with wider intelligence (such as about the development and health of the spin-out ecosystem). This results in data being provided as estimates and to high degrees of aggregation, reducing our ability to extract maximum value from the data collected.

In this report, we explain how the Spinout Register – an official publicly-available and complete list of UK university spinout companies - can address these limitations, by collecting more consistent, robust and granular data at the individual spinout level, with the potential to unlock wider uses, through data linking.

We believe that the production of the Spinout Register will represent a step-change in the approach to collection and publication of data on spinout companies. Having a complete understanding of the university spin-out population structure is fundamental in generating more generalisable and representative studies on spin-outs (whoever undertakes them). These types of evidence can enable policymakers, universities and investors to make evidence-led decisions, reducing the dependency on anecdotes in this space.

Our report details the design work UCI and Research England have undertaken in partnership with HESA, including the rationale for the types of information the Register will hold. Balancing the value of collecting new information on spinouts with the potential costs of collection, we also provide some examples of opportunities for policy design and analysis (at company level, university-level, region-level, and nation-level) for a broad range of stakeholders that we believe this information will help us unlock once this improved data system is up and running.

If you’re considering how you might want to leverage the Spinout Register and have an interesting use case… get in touch! Contact the authors:

• Joscelyn Miller (jzm22@cam.ac.uk)
• Tomas Coates Ulrichsen (tc267@cam.ac.uk)

Further details

The development work associated with the Spinout Register follows Research England’s commencement of their national knowledge exchange (KE) metrics programme, in which UCI have been commissioned as national KE metrics advisors, working alongside the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA).

The work programme is also set in the context of the 2023 Independent Review of University Spinout Companies by Irene Tracey and Andrew Williamson, in which the recommendations included the specific need for “more data and transparency on spinouts through a national register of spinouts”. Our report's publication coincides with a press release from Research England's Executive Chair Professor Dame Jessica Corner on Research England's progress towards some of the review's recommendations and how these will address the economic growth challenges faced by the UK economy.

Throughout the remainder of 2024 and 2025, UCI will continue working on a programme of work on spinouts data, alongside Research England and HESA, as part of the national knowledge exchange metrics programme.