Last week, the Higher Education Statistics Agency released the results of their latest business and community interaction survey (HEBCIS). This examines the interactions between UK higher education providers and business and the wider community and measures areas such as intellectual property (copyrights, trademarks, design rights, trade secrets and patents), regeneration programmes and continuous professional development. Not surprisingly, I believe that the most important data that is gathered by the HEBCIS survey relates to spin-off activities, more specifically the number of new graduate enterprises. This is because it not only measures the contribution of higher education in establishing start-ups within each nation or region but, more importantly, gives an indication of whether the interventions developed by universities to boost enterprise results in the creation of more businesses. According to the survey, there was a 16% increase in the number of start-up firms founded by UK
PROFESSOR DYLAN JONES-EVANS
Entrepreneurship, innovation and the economy