§ Mrs. Curtis-ThomasTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many spin-off companies have been established in each year since 1994 by each university in the United Kingdom; how many such companies failed in each year since 1994, broken down by university; and what basic research and science underpinned each such company. [122162]
§ Ms HewittTo date, this information has not been routinely collected by Government.
There have however been several surveys, two conducted on behalf of the Innovation Unit in the Department of Trade and Industry and one on behalf of the Higher Education Funding Council for England. These were, respectively, the University-Industry co-operation surveys of 1995 and 1996 and the Industry-academic links in the UK report (December 98/70 Hefce).
Further measures are being introduced to monitor the spin-out activities of universities more routinely, including through the Higher Education Reach-Out to Business and the Community fund, University Challenge Fund and Science Enterprise Challenge initiatives.
§ Mrs. Curtis-ThomasTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry on what basis he monitors the performance of spin-out companies; and what makes a company eligible to be classified as a university spin-off. [122163]
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§ Ms HewittThe performance of spin-out companies created by universities are not monitored routinely by Government.
The Government have been using the definition of a university spin-out from the Industry-Academic links in the UK report by PREST, the Policy Research in Engineering and Science & Technology Unit in the University of Manchester (December 98/70 produced by the Higher Education Funding Council for England). The definition is encapsulated on page 35 in the sentence
…spin-out companies from the HEI, which are established to exploit the commercialisation of results arising from a specific stream of research.In addition, under the pilot data collection exercise which was part of the University Challenge Fund competition in 1998–99 the AUTM (Association of University Technology Managers in the USA) definition was used this states:
Start-up (read spin-out) companies are companies that were dependent upon licensing the institution's technology for initiation.The Government are currently refining their definition of a spin-out in order to improve future data collection initiatives.