Member Article

Glaxo boss calls for streamlined route to market for job-creating university ideas

Britain needs an “invention revolution” where university ideas are commercialised and create jobs, says the CEO of GlaxoSmithKline.

In his Government-commissioned report published this morning, Sir Andrew Witty, suggests the UK needs to simplify complex funding streams in order to maximise the wealth of knowledge and innovation coming out of universities.

The pharmaceuticals boss highlighted further scope to align funding streams and encourage institution collaboration to avoid the risk of British inventions building foreign industries.

Witty says a thicket of central and local structures, funding, and advisory support creates unnecessary hurdles for those who want to turn ideas into job-creating businesses.

Witty said: “This country leads the world in many cutting-edge technologies and inventions. But too often we fail to turn these great ideas into successful companies that create jobs.

“Our universities are key to changing this. They are already a major competitive advantage for the country and I believe we could do more to maximise this.

“This report sets out how we can make better use of the ideas they create and working with other institutions how they can convert those into jobs here which support an export led economy.”

The report calls for a fund, worth at least £1 billion over the life of the next Parliament, to be made available for what Witty refers to as “Arrow Projects” - where arrows should provide full support to the invention at its tip.

Witty would like to see such ideas uninhibited by institutional status, geography or source funding.

He added: “My review has convinced me that while the UK can’t do everything, it has the capacity to do much, very well, if we do a better job of aligning our resources and put simply, on occasion, ‘get out of our own way’!”

Elsewhere the report calls on universities to create a single point of entry for SMEs that ‘triages’ their needs and directs them to the relevant part of the institution.

Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of Universities UK, said: “The report recognises the many ways in which universities drive economic growth, from engagement with SMEs, working in partnership with local enterprise partnerships and business, to cutting-edge research.

“The future of the UK economy depends upon making the most of the knowledge, innovation and energy to be found in universities. This work is already happening but the report challenges us, quite rightly, to do more, and outlines several significant ways in which this might be made to happen.”

Witty also suggested UKTI pursued Lord Heseltine’s recommendations from his 2012 review that UKTI should work with the Technology Strategy Board and the Research Councils to strengthen the marketing of the UK as an inward investment destination - on the back of our “world-renowned” research excellence.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .