The recommendations by UK research organisation Onward are aimed at increasing venture capital investment for underfunded technology transfer offices outside the Golden Triangle.
The UK government should redirect pools of existing higher education funding towards the creation of four university partner funds to boost spinouts outside the Golden Triangle of London, Cambridge and Oxford, according to recommendations from think tank Onward.
The research organisation released the recommendations in a report setting out the importance of venture funds to the success of spinout companies created from university research.
The authors pointed to the success of the UK universities of Oxford and Cambridge in increasing the number of companies formed from their research following the creation of university partner funds, Oxford Science Enterprises and Cambridge Innovation Capital.
Since the formation of the funds, the University of Oxford has seen a 166% increase in spinouts and 697% increase in capital raised. The University of Cambridge has seen a 60% growth in new companies formed from its research and a 1,310% increase in capital.
The successes of universities partnering with venture funds are concentrated in the Golden Triangle and the report argues that the rest of the UK is left behind with many technology transfer offices located outside the area suffering from understaffing and underfunding.
Although there has been some progress in the formation of spinout funds in other parts of the UK, such as the University of Manchester more than doubling the amount of investment it has attracted since the formation of investment company Northern Gritstone, other regions lack private investment capital. This regional disparity is the reason that the think tank recommends the UK government pool pots of money to focus on spinout fund creation across the country.
Onward recommends that the UK government forms a £90m University Innovation Accelerator Fund, which would be used to create a maximum of four university partner funds across the UK. This accelerator should be funded from existing pots of money, including £20m already committed to proof-of-concept funding for spinouts, and the redirecting of money from the Regional Innovation Fund and the Higher Education Innovation Fund, which award grants to universities to invest in innovation.
The accelerator fund should provide at least £20m in match funding to universities that are fundraising to establish a partner fund but don’t have the strength in their innovation ecosystem to achieve this without support.
It also recommends the creation of a university innovation “dashboard”, which tracks the production of spinouts from each university to inform the size of grants allocated from the accelerator fund. The idea of a dashboard tracking university performance in spinning out companies is supported by the UK’s new Labour government.
