More businesses and jobs to be created via £100m Northern Accelerator partnership

More high-value research and development jobs will be created in the North as the University of York joins Northern Accelerator.

The partnership, now consisting of six Northern universities, has already transformed the commercialisation of research across the North East of England. And now York is set to benefit from the programme that supports academics to turn their “world-leading research into highly investible, innovative businesses”.

The collaboration, also comprising Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside Universities, is helping address regional imbalance, aiming to level up private sector R&D investment in the North by creating innovation-led businesses that generate high quality jobs.

It ensures that “world-changing” research makes it out of universities to make a real-world impact in sectors such as health, life-sciences and green technology. Today the partnership’s universities are part of a “thriving” innovation ecosystem, from which 38 businesses have spun-out in the last 5 years.

Most of those companies are led by experienced business leaders, brought in by Northern Accelerator’s Executives into Business programme. New funding routes and support networks have been created, with spin-out businesses raising over £100m in the last five years.

Over 670 people are currently employed by spin-out businesses from the partnership’s universities. Many of these are ‘high-value’ jobs. An independent evaluation of Northern Accelerator estimated that the average annual productivity (GVA) of the jobs being created by new spinouts is £79k compared to the North East’s average of £52k.

Dr Tim Hammond, director of commercialisation and economic development at Durham University and programme lead for Northern Accelerator, commented: “York joining us is a major step in Northern Accelerator’s journey, from an initial ERDF funded project to a much larger programme funded by Research England’s Connecting Capability Fund.

“We’re now able to extend our best practice support model across the whole of the region and into North Yorkshire, combining with the University of York’s excellent research base.

“Collaboration between universities and businesses is crucial in levelling up and as a combined research commercialisation power, Northern Accelerator is showing investors how much the North has to offer.”

By Matthew Neville – Correspondent, Bdaily

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