Uni spinouts need support to bolster Wales' economy

LAST month the UK Government announced it would be allocating £30m to create four innovative hubs across Merseyside, East Anglia, the Midlands, and north-east England that would focus on creating and growing innovative new businesses from within research institutions.

- DYLAN JONES-EVANS

This announcement to expand support for university spinouts is more than just another funding initiative, it’s a deliberate move to position research commercialisation as a central driver of national economic growth.

Through a package of co-ordinated actions, the aim is to turn world-class research into world-class businesses that create jobs, attract investment, and secure the UK's place in the industries of the future. It also includes a new partnership with Universities UK, UKRI, and the British Business Bank to tackle the structural barriers to spinout creation, and the publication of a Best Practice Guide to help universities adopt founder-friendly approaches. These are not one-off actions, but part of a strategic and systemic effort to build the infrastructure necessary to nurture intellectual property and take it from lab bench to boardroom.

It is precisely the kind of intervention that Wales urgently needs, but once again we are missing from the map. This is not a new story, as this column has shown over the last two decades, with Wales consistently on the fringes of UK innovation policy. Despite a series of worthy initiatives in recent years from funding for the creation of a compound semiconductor cluster in south Wales to innovation support for life sciences, there remains no coherent national strategy to support the commercialisation of academic research.