Report

Spotlight on Spinouts

Spinouts are an important means for UK universities to commercialise research and are often the subjects of intensive interest from investors, policymakers and others with an innovation-driven agenda.

Yet for a subsection of the UK economy that receives much interest, relatively little quantitative data is available about spinouts, particularly in the public domain. Hopefully, this report goes some way towards addressing that paucity of information.

The analysis in this report is based on Beauhurst’s data on 1,424 spinouts – both alive and dead – that have spun out or met one of Beauhurst’s tracking triggers since 2011. Academic institutions share data with Beauhurst on which companies they consider to be spinouts, as opposed to student startups. A spinout is defined by the transfer of research-derived insight between the institution and the company, often in exchange for equity, although not exclusively.

Unsurprisingly, companies from the ‘golden triangle’ of Oxford, Cambridge and London dominate the population of UK spinouts. The report breakdowns the population of spinouts by origin institution and by region.