The National Centre for Universities & Businesses (NCUB) published its annual ‘State of the relationship’ report on trends in university and business collaboration in the UK on 1 December 2022. We were pleased to see a case study on CENSIS featured on page 30 of the report in the section entitled ‘Innovation at pace: reducing timescales to do applied research and development’.
The report notes that business-university collaborations have continued to be successful, despite the upheaval caused by the pandemic. Between 2019/2020 and 2020/2021, the number of interactions between universities and businesses decreased by just 2% while specific commercialisation activities, such as patent registrations increased by 11% annually, with a 4.5% increase in university spinouts surviving at least three years.
Dr Joe Marshall, Chief Executive of NCUB, said: ‘The resilience in university-business collaboration during a period of continued economic and political volatility is striking. The limited decline in interactions is illustrative of their value to the organisations involved and the role collaboration plays in generating the ideas and skills they need to succeed.”
CENSIS is honoured to be featured in this publication that promotes strong industry and university relationships, including the development of new products or services, ideas to address productivity or process challenges, and opportunities for commercialisation and business growth. These issues are of great importance to both the Scottish and UK governments, and are fundamental in helping to support innovation-led economic growth.