Unlocking innovation: A 20-year quantitative analysis of university-business collaboration

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This report provides an analysis of university-business collaboration income in the UK over the past 20 years. The report highlights several key findings:

Income to universities from collaboration with businesses has increased significantly: from £900 million to £1.5 billion (62%) between 2004 and 2023.
Universities that generated very little collaboration income in 2004 and/or have a low research capacity saw the steepest growth rates between then and 2023.
The majority of the growth in collaboration income came from contract services and intellectual property, which together accounted for 86% of the overall increase.
Most UK nations and English regions showed similarly positive growth in collaboration income, but success varied widely among individual universities.
Given that high research capacity universities tend to be large, they constituted most of the gains in income amount.
Collaboration income tends to rise during economic booms and decline during recessions. This and other evidence shows a consistent relationship between macroeconomic performance and collaboration income levels.