Creating spinouts to meet targets is a waste of effort: ‘If you want to do a spinout it is easy. You just start up a company and some academic sits around and draws a bit of money from it until the money runs out.’ Many spinouts fail because they do not attract sufficient outside finance and lack understanding of the rigours of the marketplace. Many of them will go bust because they are not solid enough to attract second-round funding.

Universities should pursue more licensing deals rather than concentrate on floating more companies. There should be a more balanced approach which would include spinouts, but also more effort to build licence fee income with existing businesses … licensing brings knowledge to the business economy.’

Some universities have high licensing levels, for example Oxford University has transferred more IP to the market than any other university in this country thanks to high licensing rates. Licensing is (ess resource intensive that spinning out new companies and has a higher probability of getting technology to market… it has the advantage of using existing expertise rather than building this from scratch.

There have been spinout successes, but ‘it is a mistake for universities to have to set a target for the number of spinouts that should be created, because you may hit the target, but you may not bring benefits.’