| # | University | Impact score↓?Composite score across 6 dimensions: patent output, spinout rate, IP revenue, TTO return, research cost recovery, and friction. Normalised within currency peer group. Higher is better. | Patents/100 FTE↕?Patents filed per 100 research FTE per year. Research FTE = senior staff × research effort fraction + postdocs. Higher values indicate stronger raw IP output. | Spinouts/100 sr.↕?Spinout companies formed per 100 senior academic staff per year. Measures the institution's ability to convert research into new ventures. Higher is better. | 3yr survival ↕?Percentage of new spinout companies still operating after 3 years. Separates institutions that form durable ventures from those that form spinouts for optics. UK sector average ~55%. | IP revenue↕?Total IP income in local currency (£m / $m / €m etc). Combines surviving spinout income and licence revenue. Values are not cross-currency comparable — each country group is normalised separately. | TTO ROI↕?IP revenue divided by TTO operating cost. Measures return on the commercialisation function itself. A ratio of 2× means the TTO generates twice its own cost in IP income. Higher is better. | Cost Recovery↕?IP income (spinout revenue + licence income) as a percentage of total research staff cost. A score of 100% means IP activities fully recover the institution's research payroll. Above 100% is valid and significant — MIT (197%), Caltech (136%) and Stanford (115%) each generate more in IP income than they spend on research staff. The UK median is ~2%. Values for Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Sweden are estimated from TTO cost ratios and should be read directionally. The closest publicly available equivalent to ROCE for university research commercialisation. | Friction/mo↕?Good ideas generated per month that are never commercialised. Calculated as viable ideas/month minus (patents + spinouts + licences)/12. Lower friction = less wasted potential. This column is inverted in scoring — lower scores higher. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Loading… | |||||||||
Patent trap
83%
of patents filed by universities are never commercialised. Patenting without a realisation strategy creates IP that sits on shelves — generating cost, not value.
The friction gap
~60–90%
of good ideas generated monthly go unrealised at most institutions. Friction is the single biggest drag on commercialisation impact — and it is rarely measured.
TTO ROI spread
10×
difference in TTO return on investment across this cohort. High-patent, low-realisation institutions consistently cluster at the bottom when friction is weighted.
Data sources: UK: HESA · HE-BCI 2023/24 · PraxisAuril KEB AU/NZ: HERDC 2023 · TEC 2023 US: IPEDS FY2023 · AUTM FY2023
AU / NZ / US IP revenue in local currency. Export CSV mirrors import format for round-trip editing.