Research England

LAST CHANCE TO APPLY: Research England - Chief of Strategy As Chief of Strategy you will lead the development and embedding of Research England’s long-term strategic direction, while also supporting key projects that address sector-wide issues. YOUR IMPACT: 📍 Shape the organisation’s strategic posture and evolution, enabling agility, foresight, and long-term impact in a changing environment. 📍 Foster a culture of outcome-focused leadership and shared responsibility at the senior level. 📍 Ensure Research England has the internal capability and external partnerships needed to operate as an evidence-led, insight-rich organisation. 📍 Oversee the full lifecycle of high-impact initiatives, ensuring alignment with organisational strategy, stakeholder expectations, and sector needs. THE BENEFITS: ⏰ Full Time & Part Time employment with flexible schedules 📅 30 days annual leave plus additional privilege days 🗺 Hybrid working from home and newly refurbished offices 🏡 Excellent work / life balance 📝 Promising internal development opportunities Link to apply and further information about the role in the comments of this post ⤵

One of our ambitions is to develop a strategic spin-out dashboard that will help us better understand the health of the UK's spin-out ecosystem and provide clear, easily accessible insights for all. In this blog, our Associate Director of Knowledge Exchange Data and Evidence, Ellen Bamford, sets out that vision: https://lnkd.in/e3VaXvM8

❓ Where and how can we make progress towards better data and metrics on university knowledge exchange (KE) for regional growth? 🎆 We're very excited to publish the UCI Expert Insights Series on university KE for regional growth 🔗 Access the contributions and find out more about the areas where progress is needed to unlock our ability to develop new data and metrics on university KE for regional growth here: https://lnkd.in/eH4_JDvi ✨ In 2025, the Policy Evidence Unit for University Commercialisation & Innovation (UCI) at the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM), University of Cambridge, in partnership with Research England, commissioned leading experts on universities, regional innovation and growth, and knowledge exchange, to produce Expert Insights papers exploring where and how progress can be made towards better data and metrics to inform approaches to funding and strengthening university KE for regional growth. 🏛️ Funders of KE are under increasing pressure to develop new approaches to enable universities to help their regional economies to prosper. Universities should also be a cornerstone of regional innovation and growth strategies. However, a lack of fit-for-purpose data capturing this potential is holds us back. This UCI Expert Insights Series brings together a series of papers from leading academics highlighting the current evidence base and what needs to be done to unlock our ability to develop better data and metrics to inform the development of more targeted and impactful KE funding programmes and strategies for regional growth. We are incredibly grateful for the contributions from: ✨ Simon Collinson: Aligning knowledge exchange pathways between universities and local growth opportunities ✨ Rick Delbridge and Kevin Morgan: Multilevel governance and place-based innovation ✨ Andrew Johnston and Fumi Kitagawa: Place-based policies and university knowledge exchange: Exploring the nexus of place and research strengths ✨ Neil Lee: Varieties of knowledge exchange: Local context, universities, and economic growth ✨ Jen Nelles and Syahirah Abdul-Rahman (Shera) Abdul-Rahman: University contributions to business cluster and localised economic development: The advantages of an expanded definition of university knowledge exchange and associated measurement challenges ✨ Mabel Sanchez Barrioluengo, Elvira Uyarra, Xiuqin Li and Daniel Cuesta Delgado: Understanding universities’ internal capabilities and resources for effective regional engagement 🙏 We are incredibly grateful to Research England for providing the funding to support the commissioning of these papers, and of course a massive thank you to the experts who contributed their time and effort to produce the papers and share their knowledge, both through the papers and a series of roundtables. 🚀 Over the next few months, we will be developing plans to start addressing these gaps.

📣 New data-driven report on the UK university spinouts ecosystem commissioned to support the Hickson Review The Tony Hickson Review, commissioned by Research England for UK Research and Innovation, on deepening university-investor links was published yesterday. I was honoured to be commissioned by Research England to provide a data-driven analysis of the UK university spinout and investor ecosystems to support & inform the work of Tony and the Review Team. My report was published alongside the main review report yesterday and can be downloaded here: https://lnkd.in/e9G85j7E Guided by the needs of Tony and the Review Team, and using the latest data from the UK Spinout Register (September 2025 release), the report provides: ✨ Updated insights on the structure, performance and outcomes of the UK university spinout ecosystem and how this compares to the wider startup population ✨ Further insights on spinout production from different types of universities ✨ Insights on the structure and evolution of the investment/investor landscape for UK university spinouts ✨ Signals of the ability of the UK to retain value from their spinouts as they grow and scale ✨ An international comparison of the investment performance of university spinouts emerging from leading universities in the UK and selected comparator nations ✨ The extent to which UK universities are producing serial entrepreneurs and how this compares internationally 🚀 Overall, the data analysis reinforces the key message of the Hickson Review – that the UK spinout ecosystem is going from strength-to-strength, with our universities competing well internationally in producing high potential spinouts. We should celebrate this, while not losing sight of the fact that we can always improve and do more to push further, faster. And here, Tony Hickson provides rich insights and actionable recommendations on how to do this. Finally, I completely agree with his overall conclusion regarding the importance of whole systems thinking. 🌐 “…that we must move beyond the search for silver bullets and shift decisively into solution mode. This requires whole system thinking comprising a clear and shared vision, capital (at the right stages), cultural change (incentives and education) and consistency (through reinforcing mechanisms that work well). We need to crowd in more capital, provide more spin-out financing at pre-incorporation and pre-seed stages and incentivise scale-up.” Many thanks to Tony Hickson, Simon Hepworth, Bethany Adams, Louise Wall, Elena A. and the Research England team! And a shout-out to the Jisc/HESA, Policy Evidence Unit for University Commercialisation & Innovation (UCI) and Research England and the tech transfer community for their efforts over the past few years in creating the new UK university Spinout Register, which powers my report and enables more robust insights to be delivered. Institute for Manufacturing (IfM), University of Cambridge University of Cambridge

Today we've published an independent report that offers recommendations to deepen university-investor links and accelerate UK economic growth.   The report by Tony Hickson, Chief Business Officer at Cancer Research UK, shows that the UK’s university and investor ecosystem is thriving and is a powerful engine of innovation and economic growth. But our national innovation landscape remains too fragmented – meaning the UK’s full research & innovation potential still isn’t being realised.   The report outlines system-wide recommendations to unlock the UK’s universities as true drivers of innovation and economic impact.   Executive Chair of Research England, Dame Jessica Corner, said: “From rolling out how quantum computing can have everyday uses, to ensuring chemical safety by identifying toxicology solutions, our spin-outs can help advance knowledge, improve lives and drive growth.   “Research England commissioned this report to understand where our intervention can benefit UK spin-outs. We will be working on developing a long-term vision that will explore the expansion of early-stage funding, how we can unlock pension capital and look to align interventions with regional strengths so every area can benefit.”   More details here: https://lnkd.in/ev7fyMYS

We are pleased to share two new publications that provide greater insight into the UK’s Knowledge Exchange (KE) and spin-out landscape.   🔸 The HE-BCI report for the AY 2023-24 This delivers the latest analysis of the most recent HE-BCI data and provides an overview of the UK KE landscape, a deep dive into the IP related metrics and a comparison of US and UK IP activity. Read it here: https://lnkd.in/eSY6xC-g   🔸 Data digest: Building on the UK’s first spin-out register: This provides five key insights into the UK’s university spin-out ecosystem and demonstrates how the spin-out register can be used in combination with other data sources to unlock the register’s full potential. Read it here: https://lnkd.in/ebiKGcKr     The data digest is accompanied by a blog from our Associate Director of Knowledge Exchange Data and Evidence, Ellen Bamford, who sets out our ambitions for developing a spin-out dashboard that will provide clear and easily accessible insights for all. Link to the blog in the comments below. 

REF 2029 is vital to supporting a UK research system that delivers knowledge and innovation with real-world impact.  Following a pause in the REF 2029 exercise, today sees work resume with the announcement of updates shaped through extensive engagement with the sector and the REF expert panel members. Helen Cross, SFC’s Director of Research and Innovation and Deputy Chair of the REF 2029 Steering Group has written a blog to provide details of all the updates and changes. https://lnkd.in/eMBmNR62

REF 2029 work has now resumed with a refreshed focus to support the UK research system, following the pause announced by Science Minister Lord Vallance in September. During this pause, Research England undertook a parallel programme of work, intended to deliver outcomes that align with the Government’s priorities and vision for higher education in England.   Since September, we have: • explored the option of baseline performance in research culture being a condition of Research England funding. • considered how our funding allocation mechanisms in England could be modified to better reward quality, as part of our ongoing review of Strategic Institutional Research Funding (SIRF). • fast-tracked existing activity related to the allocation of mainstream quality-related research funding (QR). • developed our plans to consider the future of research assessment. Our Director of Research, Steven Hill, shares where we’ve got to with this work and where we’re going next: https://lnkd.in/e3jwku-d