IfM Engage helps UK spinout ecosystem chart next phase of national data transformation

The work builds on the momentum created by the UK Spinout Register and the 2025 Spinout Data Summit. IfM Engage facilitated a strategic roadmapping workshop, bringing together 50 stakeholders from universities, funding bodies, government and data providers to identify how national-level spinout data and evidence could better support decision-making, benchmarking and policy design.  

The workshop aimed to identify the current and future opportunities that national-level spinout data and evidence could support, explore how existing data could be improved or enriched, and prioritise potential improvements based on their value and feasibility.

The insights have been synthesised into a new report, ‘Towards a Roadmap for Spinout Data and Evidence’, which sets out an ecosystem-aligned view of the priority opportunity spaces where enhanced spinout data could deliver the most value. It also proposes nine strategic initiatives to strengthen the UK’s national spinout landscape, including: developing a new techno-industrial classification system for spinouts; linking skills and competencies; systematically collecting and evaluating qualitative evidence; linking existing datasets to the Spinout Register; and refining definitions and categorisation of spinouts.

Through the Spinout Data Summit, we were able to use IfM Engage’s strategic roadmapping approach to bring together a wide range of perspectives and translate them into a practical, prioritised view of the opportunities ahead,” says Nicky Athanassopoulou, project lead and Head of Solution Development at IfM Engage. “Across short-, medium- and long-term horizons, participants emphasised that progress will require improving data quality, linking fragmented data sources, managing confidentiality risks, and embedding common standards across institutions.”

The report is published alongside UCI’s call to action, which encourages all those with an interest in university spinouts to unite behind a shared future for national spinout data. In particular, urging actors across the spinout ecosystem to build on the UK

Joscelyn Miller, UCI Policy & Impact Lead, concludes, “The national ambition underpinning this work is clear. We must continue to ensure the UK reaches its full potential to create and scale world-class spinouts. To do this, we must develop the data and evidence base needed to understand what drives their success – and translate this into better policy, better investment decisions, and stronger outcomes across the whole innovation system.

 

“Working with IfM Engage enabled us to bring structure and momentum to that conversation. The roadmap captures the priorities identified by the sector and gives us a shared basis for the next phase of work: improving the quality, coverage and usefulness of national spinout data so that it can better support universities, funders, policymakers and the wider innovation ecosystem.”