King's College London

King’s commitment to innovation has been highlighted by its inclusion in UKRI Research England’s first published list of adopters of recommendations from the Independent Review of University Spin-out Companies, conducted in November 2023.

The previous Government’s growth agenda around forming and scaling innovative companies aimed to turn the UK into a science and technology superpower. The Independent Review identified best practice in developing companies, known as spinouts, from university research, which will enable Universities to work towards this ambition. These recommendations cover the agreement of deals on market terms, equity sharing models, and clearer guidance for creating spinout companies. Investment in research and development, including spinouts, is part of several measures for economic growth pledged by the current Government to drive innovation and scientific growth in the UK.

King’s has invested in, and grown its, infrastructure and support for innovation over recent years and has a strategic commitment to commercialisation of research. In 2024, King’s announced a new approach to spinout creation - active shareholding - that promises to fast-track the transformation of innovations into spinouts through more end-to-end advice and support to academic entrepreneurs. This support now includes three accelerators - King’s Startup Accelerator, King’s Spin-out Accelerator and King’s MedTech Accelerator - as well as world-class facilities, including a state-of-the-art science and technology innovation campus under development at Canada Water.

The opening of the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering (LIHE) is dedicated to bringing MedTech innovations to patients and the market. LIHE offers hands-on executive support for medical innovations from across the UK through King’s MedTech Accelerator and their MedTech Venture Builder, giving MedTech entrepreneurs the confidence to proceed at pace from bench to bedside to boardroom.

King’s has already substantively adopted recommendations put forth in the Independent Review of spinouts through the University’s new equity and licensing policy, which offers a simple, consistent deal for spinouts with incentives for founders and investors alike. Academic founders now hold 80% of pre-money equity stakes in new spinouts, up from 50%, which sits competitively inside the recommendations of the review. In addition, the new policy supports academic entrepreneurs to invest ‘a day a week’ on their innovation, as well as low, fixed-rate royalties.

Since 2022, Innovation@King’s has supported the creation of new spinouts from King’s research and fostering a proactive, creative innovation ecosystem. The award-winning team offers end-to-end support and management of the innovation pipeline and connects King’s research with industry and funders to bring innovations to life. They support King’s researchers to win translational grants for launching early ideas beyond the lab, to secure collaborations and licensing deals with industry and other partners, and to spin out new ventures.

King’s dedication to advancing innovation was recently recognised in UKRI Research England’s latest Knowledge Exchange Framework, which ranked King’s activities in ‘research partnerships’ and ‘IP (Intellectual Property) and commercialisation’ in the top 20%, against some of the UK’s leading research-intensive universities.