More spin out data arrives

Back in June James Coe and I were hugely excited about the publication of UK-wide register of university spin-outs.

That was the big bang moment for something that is set to become an ongoing and expanding part of higher education data, and today brings the first scheduled update. We’ve flushed out an extra 201 companies, which HESA reckons are primarily those who were founded before 2012 and are still active.

But there’s also been chance to update what is published to reflect user needs – you might recall that we joined the data with records from Companies House to illustrate which are still active, this is now formally published as official statistics in development (and includes information for companies registered elsewhere.

The other big shift is the availability of information on disciplinary backgrounds for spinouts – each is mapped to one or more of the four REF main panels, allowing us to get a sense of the parts of the university (or universities – there are many with multiple parent organisations). It’s not quite the same as understanding what each company actually does, or how the work of the university has been used to make the company work.

This is an evolving release – I’d really like to see student spinouts separated off from staff spinouts if anyone from HESA is listening. What remains to be seen is how this information will be used in policy making and regulation – it’s a timely reminder of a less well understood area of university activity, but it is difficult to know exactly what to read into the Covid era peak (we reckon the impact of HEIF) and the subsequent slump.

So here’s a plot of spinouts over time for the whole sector (with a filter to look at individual providers):

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And here’s one with providers separated out, league table style:

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