Future Ready

10 October 2024

Our vision is for an innovation-led Industrial Strategy where universities can work in partnership with business, central, devolved and local governments to create inclusive, long-term growth for all nations and regions of the UK.

By driving breakthroughs in fields such as clean energy, AI and life sciences, our research-intensive universities are delivering technological advances and skills critical for our future economy and society.

This is already providing new and existing businesses with tools that are changing the way they work - this video was produced using AI software developed by UCL spinout Synthesia:

The impact of Russell Group universities is already being felt right across the UK.

• In 2022/23, Russell Group R&D and innovation catalysed £4.3bn of spending and investment from the private sector.
• In January 2024, university research breakthroughs were being developed by 331 active pharmaceutical spinouts.
• Russell Group universities attracted £1bn in FDI into their R&D in 2022/23.
• AI university spinouts secured £230m in equity investments in 2023.

And research-intensive universities are ready to do even more to help deliver an innovation-led Industrial Strategy.

To harness university capabilities to help deliver growth across the UK, we recommend government pursues an industrial strategy which:

• Strikes a balance between mission and sector-based strategy to maximise impact across the whole economy while giving businesses in key industries confidence to invest in the UK.
• Thinks for the long term to deliver a thriving economy into the 2030sas well as short-term growth.
• Creates the right environment to build new public-private partnerships by investing in R&D infrastructure, supporting discovery research and cutting red tape to make it easier to scale new regional innovation clusters.
• Introduces formal mechanisms to use university sector and academic expertise to inform the direction and implementation of the Industrial Strategy.

Find out more about why research-intensive universities will be key delivery partners for the Industrial Strategy in our new report, Future Ready.