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Dept of Trade and Industry

Answer

Mrs. Curtis-Thomas: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry on what basis he monitors the performance of spin-out companies; and what makes a company eligible to be classified as a university spin-off. [122163] Ms Hewitt: The performance of spin-out companies created by universities are not monitored routinely by Government. The Government have been using the definition of a university spin-out from the Industry-Academic links in the UK report by PREST, the Policy Research in Engineering and Science & Technology Unit in the University of Manchester (December 98/70 produced by the Higher Education Funding Council for England). The definition is encapsulated on page 35 in the sentence . . . spin-out companies from the HET, which are established to exploit the commercialisation of results arising from a specific stream of research. In addition, under the pilot data collection exercise which was part of the University Challenge Fund competition in 1998-99 the AUTM (Association of University Technology Managers in the USA) definition was used this states: Start-up (read spin-out) companies are companies that were dependent upon licensing the institution's technology for initiation. The Government are currently refining their definition of a spin-out in order to improve future data collection initiatives.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

122163; 350 c474-5W;350 c476-7W

Session

1999-00

Subjects

Companies Universities Small businesses Technology Research Science Policy Research in Engineering Science and Technology

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk