UCL Business CEO optimistic about UK life sciences growth

👏 A fantastic piece by Anne Lane, CEO of UCL Business Ltd, reminding us of the extraordinary potential of UK research and the enterprising academics driving it forward. 🪜 The UK is home to world-class ideas that can transform healthcare, create jobs, and fuel economic growth. But as Anne highlights, one of the biggest challenges is the first step: turning promising research into prototypes, testing markets, and showing investors that innovations are ready to scale. 🚀 That’s why Proof of Concept (PoC) funding is so vital. It unlocks potential that might otherwise remain in the lab, helping breakthrough ideas onto the commercialisation pathway and giving them the best chance to thrive. 📈 The demand is clear — the recent PoC awards were hugely oversubscribed. Expanding this support means investing in the UK economic growth agenda we all want to succeed. 🌍 With the right support, the next generation of world-changing companies can be discovered here, developed here, and delivered here. 👉 See the full opinion piece here: https://lnkd.in/eZGYiSc7 Knowledge Exchange UK Russell Group of Universities University Alliance (UK) Adam Stoten PhD RTTP Laurence Grafton #UniversityInnovation #LifeSciences #Spinouts #POCFunding #EconomicGrowth

🖋️"The spinout sector across the UK is flourishing; £2.6bn in equity investment in 2024 [...] UCL Business Ltd alone has attracted £3bn in spinout investment over five years, creating over 2,000 jobs across 104 companies."   Writing in The Financial Times, Dr Anne Lane (CEO of UCL Business Ltd) explains how #AI and #lifesciences are converging within universities and hospitals, with viable businesses emerging.   But, she argues, the UK could be doing much more to leverage economic growth from university research. She calls for greater financial support to help ventures to get off the ground, as well as calling on British capital to take risks and be patient for the returns.    Crucially, she says that the NHS must be open to spinouts, so that new clinically proven treatments developed in the UK can reach the patients who need them.   🔗 Read here - https://lnkd.in/eZGYiSc7

An excellent piece in the Financial Times today by Anne Lane, CEO at UCL Business Ltd: https://lnkd.in/eZGYiSc7 ✍ "The spinout sector across the UK is flourishing; £2.6bn in equity investment in 2024, even as wider high-growth company investment declined by 19 per cent. UCL Business alone has attracted £3bn in spinout investment over five years, creating over 2,000 jobs across 104 companies. "But the UK could be doing so much more to leverage economic growth from university research. Academics tell me the biggest challenge is taking the first steps — prototyping products and finding the market fit." University spinouts provide great return on investment, generating billions in economic outputs and supporting tens of thousands of jobs. It's why we've been calling on government to join universities in investing more in the early development stage - to bridge the early-stage funding gap and get more high-potential businesses ready for valuable private investment. Read more in this chapter of our report, Future Ready: the Path to Growth ➡️ https://lnkd.in/e8RME8S4

We are honoured to confirm the official execution of a multi-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Knowmad Institut and 𝗦𝗢𝗚𝗟𝗔𝗕. This foundational strategic framework elevates our institutional association, signifying the commencement of a unified Open Science and Open Governance ecosystem. Our shared belief is that modern governance must move beyond mere data collection and technological analysis. True progress requires uniting Strategic Intelligence, the ability to assess complex global challenges, with Creative Wisdom™️, the proven capacity of citizens to design humanity-centered, localised solutions. This MoU is our commitment to forging a seamless link between these two spheres, ensuring that the voice and creativity of the public are transformed into evidence-based, compassionate, and durable policy action. #OpenScience #OpenGovernance #StrategicPartnership #HumanDignity #PolicyImpact #CreativeWisdom #SDGs #GlobalGoals #HumanityCenteredDesign

Every global campaign starts with a strong foundation — insight, science, and alignment. But between strategy and execution, something often gets lost: context. A message that inspires in one country can sound distant in another. Not because it’s wrong — but because every healthcare system has its own truth. Different patient journeys. Different access challenges. Different ways doctors listen, learn, and trust. We translate the language. We adapt the numbers. But real adaptation goes deeper — it’s cultural, behavioral, human. The goal isn’t to change the science; it’s to translate the meaning. That’s not rebellion. That’s resonance.

Lottery funding with some benchmarks of quality would be much fairer and less time-consuming. Frankly Horizon Europe will keep losing top scholars doing top work because the bureaucracy of applying has become far too complicated, and the AI game has now further complicated success rates and how to make one proposal stand out from the others, instead of focusing on what we should do best as academics: scientific excellence and real impact on society beyond increasingly baroque and arcane metrics and theories of change. Top scholars will spend the limited resources available in a much more efficient manner if they avoid spending months of hard work for proposals that will have increasingly lower chances of success on average. Horizon Europe risks losing its main purpose, which is to foster and nurture excellence across European borders and beyond. My experience with lottery funding with smaller schemes such as the Norwegian Research Council's industry PhD grant have been very positive. We put in a lot of work to make sure that the quality requirements were met, and felt the outcome was much fairer when it was about lottery selection, rather than some increasingly random evaluation process, where evaluation committes don't have time to properly appraise the enormous amount of submissions, and to distinguish real quality from hyped AI-enhanced empty language to fill in this or that bureaucratic criterion. I hope the Commission will move in this direction, and continue to make Horizon Europe relevant and crucial for both European and international academia and the broader society.

🔬 The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has today (Thursday 30 October) confirmed long-term R&D funding for the UK’s research agencies and bodies, with investment for the bodies that “are making science and tech breakthroughs that improve lives and grow our economy”. DSIT states that these allocations give visibility and clarity on the development of DSIT’s plans for R&D budgets, with the Department’s overall R&D budget growing in real terms. 📈 Their new analysis, published today, shows the value of public investment in R&D to the UK – with every £1 spent delivering £8 in net economic benefits over the long-term. Crowding in private investment is a key part of this, with every £1 of public money invested in R&D crowding in a further £2 in private investment, on average. 🔗 Read further details here: https://lnkd.in/e2GuuhpA

In this session, I learnt that a good policy research must meet the SMART criteria- it should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This ensures that the research objectives are clear, realistic, and can lead to meaningful outcomes. And also, an important lesson in this session states that a research should not only describe the problem but also propose feasible policy solutions or recommendations that can bring about positive change or improvement. Most importantly, policy research should bridge the gap between evidence and decision-making to promote sustainable development and societal impact. #B4HYIF2025 #Budget4HealthCampaign #EquicareStrategies B4HYIF/PF/2025/013

🚀 New Report Alert: Building Winners in the UK Innovation Ecosystem Excited to share a powerful new publication by Charlotte Hoole, released in collaboration with the Innovation and Research Caucus. 🔍 The report, Building Winners: Strengthening the UK Innovation Ecosystem, dives deep into the structural, institutional, and policy factors shaping innovation across the UK. This is a must-read for anyone working in innovation policy, economic development, or research commercialisation. 📘 Read the full report here: https://lnkd.in/eWZDJysK #InnovationPolicy #KnowledgeExchange #UKInnovation #ResearchImpact #Commercialisation #InnovationSupport #BuildingWinners #InnovationCaucus