By Karl Murray, Northern Accelerator Access to Finance Specialist
Last week I had the pleasure of joining colleagues, partners, and innovation leaders at the Barclays Spinout Symposium in London — a sold out event designed to explore how the UK can continue to build, scale, and sustain world leading university spinouts.
Hosted by Barclays in partnership with Knowledge Exchange UK and Conception X, the symposium brought together tech transfer experts, investors, and policymakers to share practical insights into how we strengthen our national spinout ecosystem. The agenda covered everything from commercialisation strategy to TTO infrastructure and real-world case studies with contributions from some of the sector’s most experienced voices.
As someone working across Northern Accelerator, which champions collaboration and commercialisation in the North East, I found the symposium packed with insights and reminders of the important work we’re doing regionally.
Here are my key takeaways:
1. The UK has enormous, untapped potential — but collaboration is essential
Several speakers emphasised that the UK already performs strongly in generating and scaling spinouts. However, given the talent and research strength across the country there is still room to grow with more consistent support across regions, institutions, and funding pathways.
For regions like ours, this reinforces the importance of cross-university collaboration models such as Northern Accelerator, which has already transformed research commercialisation across the North East. But there is still much more we can do.
2. Culture-building isn’t a ‘nice to have’ — it’s the foundation
The opening session, The Catalytic Power of Commercialisation, explored how universities can nurture a culture where innovation, entrepreneurship, and real world impact become part of everyday research life.
A strong process can take you far, but culture is what gives people the confidence — and permission — to think like founders. This aligns closely with the work we do across Northern Accelerator, where we focus not only on funding and infrastructure, but on empowering researchers to step into commercialisation with clarity and support.
3. Infrastructure and shared expertise are essential
There was a great conversation around TTO infrastructure and how universities can build the systems and training needed to accelerate knowledge transfer. The topics of shared TTO models and collaborations models to help address resourcing and skills challenges came up again and again throughout the day.
Pooling talent, creating shared funding programme and linking founders across institutions… with Northern Accelerator we’ve shown how much impact can be achieved together rather than alone. However, shared models must continually adapt and improve.
4. Real world spinout journeys don’t follow a straight line
Every spinout journey is different, and the real-world case studies shared during the Spinout in the Wild session highlighted that perfectly. Some founders move quickly; others need years of development before they’re investor ready. Some scale fast; others take a more measured route.
From an Access to Finance perspective, the takeaway was clear: we need flexible support and finance pathways that work with founders’ technologies, teams, and risk profiles.
5. The ecosystem’s strength lies in its people
One of the most inspiring aspects was hearing the passion, honesty, and ambition from leaders across the sector — from UKRI to UCLB, CRUK, Queen Mary University London, and more. There was a shared commitment to building an innovation ecosystem that supports founders not just in London, but across every region.
For those of us working in the North East, this collective drive reinforces the importance of the support offered through Northern Accelerator — to ensure our region continues to develop highly investible spinouts that deliver real-world impact.
Looking ahead
Events like the Barclays Spinout Symposium remind us that we’re part of something much bigger — a UK wide effort to unlock the full potential of research, create high value jobs, support entrepreneurs, and strengthen local economies.
And most importantly: the North East has a huge role to play. The challenges and opportunities discussed throughout the day only reinforce the importance of the work taking place at Northern Accelerator. We’re continuing to support a region-wide innovation ecosystem that is collaborative, ambitious, and plays an increasingly central role in the UK’s innovation story.
If you were at the symposium, I’d love to hear your thoughts — what stood out to you, and what you think the sector needs next.
