Written by Ellen Bamford, Associate Director, Knowledge Exchange Data and Evidence, Research England.
In recent weeks we have continued to reach important milestones in the delivery of better spin-outs data, with HESA (part of Jisc) launching the Spin-out Census, which will ultimately provide the data for the first Spin-out Register.
The Register itself - and as a basis for data-linking to generate further new metrics - is vital to inform policy, practice and our funding, which we, with our national KE advisers at UCI, discuss in a new report published today.
The Spin-out Register will provide the first publicly-curated ‘official’ list of UK university spin-out companies, providing an understanding of the complete national picture and a springboard basis further analysis. The Register will then enable the unlocking of richer data-led insight about these important ventures from other sources.
In Spring 2025, when the Register is published, we will celebrate the scale and diversity of spin-outs that diverse universities produce to power economic growth and prosperity.
Over the course of 2025, prototypes of new data-linked generated metrics will emerge (rather than those requiring direct data collection from institutions). These can start to populate a dashboard of key indicators on commercialisation.
For Research England (RE), these new data will be important inputs to our developments of Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF) and the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) and part of our annual analysis of the sector’s IP performance. Better data will further deepen Research England’s KE systems intelligence capability, which in the meantime continues to strengthen such as through annual publications of the KEF, including our recent publication of KEF4.
Before then, the production of the Spin-out Register in itself will represent a step-change in the quality and design of university spin-out data. And not just for use by Research England and other funders, but for all kinds of different users with different data needs, including universities.
We believe the Register will be a key foundation to driving forwards a deeper understanding and measurement of spin-outs, and would welcome conversations about how it could be best used by others.
As part of our development work this year it has been important to test our design work with institutions, both informally and through HESA’s consultation channels. In particular, as with all data work, taking steers on collection burden and handling more sensitive data, ensuring these are accounted for in the final data designs.
We need better spin-outs data, but working on developing such novel and improved approaches to data has also been a vital wider learning experience. In Spring 2023, in our Strategic Development Plan (SDP), we presented our ambition to develop our national capability in KE metrics. Since then, the development of better spin-outs data has been a focus of our national KE metrics programme, with expert advice from UCI, and in partnership with HESA.
What have we learnt from spin-outs work which was our first exercise in deploying these capabilities?
- First, new data development poses very specific challenges particular to the specific topic. As an example, with spin-outs, significant domain knowledge was needed just to establish a clear definition of what is a spin-out. And more will be needed when identifying meaningful future metrics.
- Second, partnership is vital. To measure something, you need to understand it, and from a breadth of perspectives. Insights from the HE sector, PraxisAuril and individual tech transfer experts, provided a knowledge basis of the topic, which UCI turned into expert characterization of the activity, building on many years of research. UCI advice informed the RE-HESA partnership working, to design and define data requirements for a ‘Spin-out Register’. RE needs data – for example, to use in HEIF or KEF – so provides expertise on quality standards for data for different policy uses. HESA have long established expertise in higher education data identification and collection for multiple different uses, reflected for example in their status as an official statistics provider.
- Third, there are important system wide issues in data collection. In July, we agreed with the Office for Students that it was sensible that we took over the lead on KE data requirements as the experts on the area of policy and primary data user.
- Fourth, both domain knowledge and novel methods are important tools. Use of data linking is one such tool, in the current example, using the spin-outs register with commercial datasets to measure private investment raised. Domain knowledge may be specific to each new data development challenges, novel methods are likely to be useful across many challenges.
- Fifth, creating new data is demanding and difficult work and it is important to share our learnings, including, as an example, across UKRI. We need to share approaches so new datasets are designed to be used together with existing datasets (what is called interoperability). It is important to consider working across the UK higher education funding bodies on data, so we maximise opportunities for UK-wide KE data that can be used, as example, with UKRI or REF research data.
Where do we go next?
Clearly there is a long road ahead to achieve all we want on spin-outs data. Our end goal is to replace existing HE-BCI data fields, such as on external investment, with new higher quality data- linked metrics, reducing HEP burden, and for this better data to be closer to impacts and to be useable in funding. But there are other important challenges in KE metrics.
Our next work package is just starting – on local and regional KE metrics. UCI is scoping the policy needs and academic domain expertise to start to define opportunities and challenges in specifying new data in this area.
From what we had planned in our SDP, what we haven’t delivered is a national conference on KE metrics. Talking about developing new data was overtaken by actually developing new data. Given how much we have learnt so far, a series of conferences or workshops in the future will likely be more helpful. We look forward to working with PraxisAuril to put in place the right opportunities for national conversations - combining practitioner insights, the challenges and opportunities we have found in data discovery and learning from each other.
As Stuart Wilkinson, Chief Executive Officer at PraxisAuril said:
"The national focus on spin-outs in the last year has provided a real spotlight on one of the ways University research can make real difference to the economy and society. The development of the spin-out register is one exciting outcome of that and will provide greater visibility and understanding of the rich variety and of our national spin-out base and the contribution they make to the public good. We, along with Research England, would welcome thoughts and suggestions of the variety of uses this resource can be put to once available."
To understand more about our design and development work towards a Spin-out Register, read UCI and Research England’s joint report on the Spin-out Register here: https://www.ukri.org/publications/spin-out-register-development-visioning-report
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Written by Ellen Bamford, Associate Director, Knowledge Exchange Data and Evidence, Research England.