UK: Two tangle at the top of the tech transfer table

The UK

If Global University Venturing’s latest 2014 data is anything to go by, the UK remains the second most active region globally for research commercialisation. Built on the back of one of the oldest and most prestigious higher education systems in the world, the UK’s universities are one of the main pillars on which the success of the country is built. It is also a sector that is generally trending in the right direction, with key metrics, according to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) data (see box).

For the 2012-13 period, collaborative research, intellectual property (IP) income, consultancy and other activities brought in £3.57bn ($5.95bn) for UK universities, an increase of 5% over the year before. The slowing in establishing new university spin-outs has continued, with Hefce reporting 150 compared with 191 in 2011-12, yet IP income as a whole is up 9.3%. Also, the impact of pushes for entrepreneurship on campus is bearing fruit, with the number of graduate start ups rising 28% year on year, and now standing at 3,502.

A large part of the spin-out generation over the past year has stemmed from the UK’s Golden Triangle – Oxford, Cambridge and London. As the nominations for the Global University Venturing Awards 2014 will attest, Oxford University has had a stellar year. The acquisition of gaming spin-out NaturalMotion for $527m made over $50m for the university, while the university’s tech transfer unit Isis Innovation has also expanded on international relations with China and launched a fund to seed its spin-outs.

In Cambridge, firms operating in Europe’s largest tech cluster had great news with the launch of Cambridge Innovation Capital. The firm has a £50m evergreen fund, which it is looking to double in the next two years or so through an IPO, which should continue to provide a large investment pot for companies in the area for the foreseeable future.

Companies linked to Imperial Innovations, Imperial College London’s techtransfer office (TTO), had similar good news recently after Imperial Innovations raised funds through the placement of ordinary shares said to be worth $255m. Combined with Imperial Innovations expanding its reach to IP from other universities in the Golden Triangle, the extra cash will be bringing a smile to spin-outs and potential spin-outs, which are no doubt incentivised after Imperial College London spin-out Circassia held the largest UK biotech initial public offering for years in March.

The UK’s most successful incubator, SetSquared– a partnership involving the universities of Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey – also had a strong year. The incubator hit £1bn in external fundraising for its more than 1,000 incubated companies, and it was ranked the number-one incubator in Europe by the University Business Incubator Index’s 2014 report.

One of the biggest deals in UK tech transfer this year came when IP Group acquired fellow commercialisation firm Fusion IP in January for $116m. The deal consolidates a lot of tech transfer flexing power under one roof – IP Group picks up Fusion IP’s standing commercialisation agreements with Sheffield, Cardiff, Nottingham and Swansea universities. IP Group also raised £100m earlier in the year through share placements, and has also signed deals with Princeton, Pennsylvania and Columbia universities in the US, piloting an international bridge that could mean big things for the London-based firm.

In Manchester, the university is still constructing its £61m National Graphene Institute, due to open next year. The university and the institute are central to efforts to create a “graphene city”, designed to sustain Manchester’s leading role inthe development of the “wonder material” graphene. Evidence of interest in what Manchester is already doing comes by the way of 2-DTech, a spin-out from the university, which was acquired within a year of its launch.

The UK’s future may be marred by the Scottish independence vote on September 18. Many facts are somewhat veiled by the smog of rhetoric that has dominated the debate. However, a report earlier in the year from tech transfer organisation PraxisUnico indicated that Scottish spin-outs have an economic impact of more than $500m a year, and 20% of all UK spin-outs originate from Scottish universities.

For the UK, losing Scotland would be a major blow to its innovation efforts, but this is not a one-way street. Should Scotland leave, questions hang over its ability to continue to provide free higher education, over currency issues, whether independence will trigger a flight of the financial sector to England, and over membership of the EU. While Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond continues to paint a rosy picture of Scotland both having its haggis and eating it on all fronts, there are plenty who argue otherwise, meaning there could be a negative impact on Scottish research.

That said, no matter which way the vote goes in September, the UK looks set to continue building on its strong academic base and growing economy for the foreseeable future.

UK fact box

Spin-outs 2012-13: 150 (2010-11: 268)
R&D spend as % of GDP 2011: 1.7%
Global innovation ranking: 2 (2013: 3)
Global competiveness ranking: 10 (2013: 8)
Income from licensing 2011-12: $123m

UK tech transfer offices

Aberdeen University – Commercialisation and Knowledge
Exchange Group
Birmingham University – Alta Innovations
Cambridge University – Cambridge Enterprise
Cardiff University – Fusion IP
Edinburgh University – Edinburgh Research and Innovation
Glasgow University – Research strategy and innovation office
Imperial College London – Imperial Innovations
King’s College London – KCL Business and Innovation
Leeds University – IP Group
Manchester University – UMI3
Newcastle University – Technology transfer and licensing
Oxford University – Isis Innovation
Queen’s University Belfast – Enterprise Development
Sheffield University – IP Group
St Andrews University – Knowledge Transfer Centre
Ulster University – Office of innovation
University College – London UCL Business
Warwick University – Warwick Ventures

Sweden

Despite Sweden’s incredible ability to innovate, its lack of transparency makes it difficult to do the country credit in this report.

Beyond the Nobel prize, Sweden is home to Skype and Spotify, as well as inventions such as dynamite and the computer mouse. While it may have been knocked down a peg by the UK in this year’s Global Innovation Index, it holds on in third place. The country still performs well against others in terms of gross expenditure on research and development, its number of researchers, high patent applications, and benefits from a strong economy.

And yet its technology transfer scene is largely impregnable. A big part of this is due to the country’s professor’s privilege law, giving researchers complete control over IP developed on campus. In effect, this would allow a researcher to develop a technology at Uppsala, and then walk off with it to another university, or a corporate, or just sit on it. Ultimately, the last is what happens, as the lack of guaranteed incentives have led to a hugely underdeveloped infrastructure for knowledge and technology transfer.

Brent Goldfarb’s and Magnus Henrekson’s study Bottom-up versus top-down policies towards the commercialisation of university intellectual property, published by Research Policy, compares US and Swedish approaches to tech transfer. They note that at least 71% of inventions require further involvement by the academic researcher in order to be commercialised successfully. Yet despite being called professor’s privilege, many Swedish researchers are unsupported and have little motivation to leave their research posts, leading to plenty of missed opportunities.

The situation, aside from a lack of clear infrastructure or roadmap for academics to follow, leaving them unsupported in advancing their technologies, also means there is a dearth of both data and manpower. The lack of data is especially detrimental when it comes to evaluating the performance of Swedish tech transfer, but the overall image is that of the Swedish academic powerhouse beingan Olympic sprinter capable of picking up the gold, yet with shoelaces tied together before the race.

Resources acquired from the Swedish Network for Innovation and Technology Transfer Support indicate that this has been a topic of discussion as far back as the turn of the millennium, with multiple sources indicating that Sweden is losing out in comparison with commercialisation practices in the UK or the US. Despite evidence that the country should reconsider its position, Sweden has stuck to its guns.

The fact remains that, even without the data and the manpower, somehow Sweden’s system works. From a reporter’s perspective, the country takes the Fort Knox approach to tech transfer, locking up anything that looks useful and putting up walls to innovation when they should be constructing a highway. Yet incredible technology still squeezes through the cracks. Disruptive Materials, a recently launched Uppsala spin out, is commercialising Upsalite – discovered by accident, it should be noted. The compound allows for drugs currently thrown in the bin to be reconsidered, as Upsalite increases solubility, meaning drugs the body could not previously absorb effectively can be considered a second time.

Even though the system seems counterproductive, it still delivers results. But the question remains, could Sweden do more to live up to its potential?

Sweden fact box

Global innovation ranking: 3 (2013: 2)
Global competiveness ranking: 6 (2013: 4)

Swedish tech transfer offices

Uppsala University – UU Innovation
Lund University – LU Innovation System
Chalmers University – Innovation office west
Gothenburg University – GU Holding
Stockholm University – SU Innovation
Karolinska Institute – Karolinska Institutet Innovations
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences – SLU Holding
Umeå University – Uminova Innovation
Royal Institute of Technology – KTH Innovation
Linkoping University – LiU Innovation
Karlstads University – Grants and innovation office
Mid Sweden University – MIUN Innovation
Linnaeus University – Grants and innovation office
Orobo University – Innovation office
Lulea University of Technology – Centek

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