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Business and University Collaboration

Volume 467: debated on Thursday 15 November 2007

15. To ask the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills what estimate he has made of the economic value of collaboration between universities and business over the last 10 years. (164268)

University business collaboration is an important driver of innovation and one we have in, for example, the Higher Education Innovation Fund and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships. It is not practical to put a single number estimate on the economic value of this activity, but Funding Councils collect data from universities through the Higher Education Business and Community Interaction Survey, which shows significant increases over recent years in key measures of collaboration.