Recommendation 11

HM Government Not Addressed

The government partially agrees with this recommendation. Research England already funds knowledge-exchange capacity through the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF), which enables universities to develop their commercialisation capability and support local economic activity. We agree on the Committee’s focus on success and HEIF provides flexible investment in institutional capabilities, including Technology Transfer Office (TTO) capacity, through a competitive, performance-driven allocation mechanism. A current review of HEIF will increase focus on delivering economic growth priority, including increasing incentives for university contributions to local economic growth. This aligns with our belief that effective technology transfer offices can and should play an important role in supporting commercialisation. We agree with the Committee that throughput is crucial and Research England has piloted shared technology-transfer approaches through programmes such as the Research England Development Fund and the Connecting Capability Fund, enabling institutions to collaborate and build capacity and volume of throughput. Research England will publish the independent evaluation of the six-month shared TTO pilot too. Research England invested over £4.7 million into 13 different shared TTO pilots in response to recommendation 4 of the independent review of university spin-outs. The evaluation highlights strong sector enthusiasm for shared services, with most projects meeting or exceeding their KPIs. The pilot demonstrated effective knowledge sharing and collaboration, including pooled training, access to legal advice and development of templates that the Committee rightfully identified as important indicators for the capacity of technology transfer offices.