Back in November Irene Tracey, vice chancellor of the University of Oxford, and Andrew Williams, chair of the venture capital committee at the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, released their independent review of university spin-outs. And then, almost immediately, the government responded.
Across the two documents everyone agreed that sharing best practice, holding better data, pooling capacity, better training, and more sustainable funding would be a great idea. All entirely helpful policy levers to improve the density and success of spin-outs. The government also encouraged universities to take less equity in companies with the hope that universities can spin out bigger companies, founders can make more money, and in turn the economy will grow.
All very good in theory but the government response did not grapple with how funding, support, or political attention for spin-outs should be prioritised against a plethora of other research priorities.
We’ve now had the first tranche of HE-BCI data since the spin-out review. This is the Higher Education and Business Community Interaction data which, as the name suggests, sets out the work universities are doing with businesses and in the community. It has some limitations as illustrated by DK elsewhere on the site.
