Growing Value: Business-University Collaboration for the 21st Century

This book is a contribution to the debate about how best to grow economic value in the UK by more effective collaboration between businesses and universities. It is based on the work of a Task Force led in 2011-12 for the National Centre for Universities and Business in its previous incarnation as the Council for Industry and Higher Education.

The steering group for that Task Force included Lord Sainsbury, the former UK Minister of Science and Innovation, some of Britain’s foremost science-based entrepreneurs, R&D directors of global companies, senior figures from the English funding Council and Research Councils UK, and five Vice-Chancellors. It was supported by other CIHE Council members, such as Sir Richard Lambert, former Director-General of the CBI.

The working groups were led by Robert Sorrell, Vice President for Public Partnerships of BP, and Michael Caine, then Associate Dean (Enterprise) at Loughborough University. They included eighteen business and university members.

The research underpinning this book was carried out at the UK Innovation Research Centre (UK~IRC) by Alan Hughes, Andrea Mina and Jocelyn Probert of the Centre for Business Research (CBR) at the University of Cambridge, and Ben Martin of the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex. It draws in particular upon three reports they produced in 2012: The UK R&D Landscape by Hughes and Mina; Enhancing Impact - The Value of Public Sector R&D by Hughes and Martin; and Enhancing Collaboration, Creating Value - Business Interaction with the UK Research Base in Four Sectors by Mina and Probert. The data in The UK R&D Landscape report have been updated and revised for this publication.

Although time has moved on and the UK government continues to develop policy in this area, we believe our conclusions and recommendations, based on this extensive research, remain valid.