{"text":[[{"start":5.15,"text":"Westminster has a familiar story about UK innovation. Britain has no shortage of talent or ideas, the argument goes, but a lack of domestic capital has left homegrown breakthroughs vulnerable to the deep pockets of US investors."}],[{"start":20,"text":"The narrative has only been strengthened by Google’s purchase of DeepMind, Nvidia’s failed merger with Arm and IonQ’s $1bn takeover of Oxford Ionics. However, new data suggests the bigger obstacle lies much closer to home: scaling ideas that originate outside Oxford and Cambridge."}],[{"start":39.35,"text":"The scale of the imbalance is striking. Britain’s two oldest universities account for a quarter of spinouts but represent almost two-fifths of investment rounds and 59 per cent of declared funding, according to data from analytics start-up The Data City, which covers active spinouts founded since 2012."}],[{"start":null,"text":"
"}],[{"start":59.2,"text":"In the sectors central to the government’s industrial strategy, the concentration is even sharper. Oxford and Cambridge account for more than a third of life sciences spinouts, 39 per cent in semiconductors, and 42 per cent in AI."}],[{"start":74.05,"text":"The figures help explain why university spinouts have attracted such intense political attention despite spinouts accounting for just one in 100 cutting-edge businesses in the UK."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":84.75,"text":"For Andy Burnham, that presents a challenge. On Monday the prime minister-in-waiting said he wanted to nurture growth by placing universities “at the heart of local economies” as part of his ‘Manchesterism’ economic agenda."}],[{"start":98.15,"text":"The data shows that the University of Manchester is not short of spinouts, ranking fourth in the UK, but the gap with the country’s leading innovation hub is vast. "}],[{"start":108.25,"text":"Cambridge has produced three times as many spinouts as Manchester’s top-ranking university, but boasts more than 50 times the amount of declared investment."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":119.05,"text":"Swansea is another stark example. The Welsh university ranks eighth nationally by number of spinouts, ahead of Russell Group universities such as Sheffield and Glasgow, yet averages just 0.7 investment rounds per spinout, compared with three for companies spun out of Cambridge. "}],[{"start":136.35,"text":"The data echoes the warnings from a recent government-commissioned review that academic pedigree has created a cycle in which “visibility, not innovation, drives investment”. "}],[{"start":146.5,"text":"The analysis also puts fears of an American grab for British innovation into perspective, suggesting that just one in 40 active spinouts are US-owned. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":156.75,"text":"The figures are not exhaustive, as some spinouts disappear from the data after being absorbed into overseas companies. But, even allowing for that, the numbers remain small. The Data City identifies fewer than a dozen spinouts that ceased operating in the UK following acquisition by an American company."}],[{"start":175.3,"text":"This is a striking finding as it suggests the main threat to UK spinouts ecosystem is not from across the Atlantic, but closer to home. If Burnham wants to make Britain the “Innovation Nation of the next decade”, he would do well to start there."}],[{"start":194.65,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1783088121_7168.mp3"}