Land of Hope and Technology February 2016 | Page 7

ISSUE 1

The three Us,
universities,
universities and
universities
The UK ranks second in the world for
business-university collaboration, and fifth for
business university collaboration in R&D. In
the year 2012/13 the UK generated no less
than £2.7 billion from universities working
with business. During the same period,
higher education generated £86.6 million in
IP revenue and £376 million from graduate
start-ups.
According to rankings produced by the FT, of
the world’s top business schools for MBAs,
nine are in the UK. Of the world’s top 50
universities according to the Times Higher
Education World University rankings, seven
are in the UK.
Or take so called start-up programs. We will
be returning to this in a moment, because
the emergence of a culture designed to
support start-ups and businesses developing
beyond the start-up phase, is actually quite
staggering. For the time being, suffice to
know that around a quarter of start-up
programs are run by universities.