Universities are uniquely placed to drive innovation and deliver economic growth
Credit: The University of Manchester
“You can’t have an innovation economy without great universities,” says the Vice-Chancellor of The University of Manchester
From splitting the atom in 1917 to the discovery of graphene in 2004, The University of Manchester has been at the forefront of scientific innovation for more than a century.
Now ranked fifth in the UK by the Government for its research power, the university prides itself on driving innovation across a vast number of sectors and believes that it is uniquely placed to deliver the step-change in economic performance that the UK needs.
A recent independent report published by London Economics shows that for every £1 invested in research activities, The University of Manchester generates £5.95 in productivity benefits to the UK economy.
In 2022-23 the university’s total economic impact on the UK economy was £7.3 billion. Its income alone was £1.3 billion – larger than that of Manchester United Football Club – and it supported 31,000 jobs across the country.
During the same period there were 343 University of Manchester spinout and start-up companies operating in the UK. Of these, 175 were headquartered in Greater Manchester, with a turnover of £129 million and employing 1,195 staff.
Professor Duncan Ivison, who was appointed as President and Vice Chancellor of the University of Manchester last year (2024), sees higher education as one of the UK’s success stories – “hugely respected globally”. He says that universities like his own are vitally important in generating ideas and innovation and unlocking economic growth.
“Universities are like factories of ideas,” he says. “Our strength is in the generation of ideas that benefit the whole of society. You don’t have an innovation economy without great universities – that’s just a fundamental fact.
“One of the most important things we do is to incubate basic research, asking questions and following the answers wherever they lead. No other organisation in society does that. It’s the most precious thing, something unique to us, and we have to preserve and protect it, even though it can be challenging in the current funding environment.”
Credit: The University of Manchester
Professor Ivison believes that great universities will be defined by their ability to tackle challenges such as climate changes and health inequalities. However, he stresses the importance of accelerating the time between discovery and impact – in other words, getting ideas out into the world to make a positive difference faster.
“Universities have to organise our disciplines around the challenges the world faces – rather than expecting the world to organise itself around our disciplines,” he says.
“I remember in the early days of Covid talking to some of our leading virologists at another institution and asking them: ‘How long is it going to take to get a vaccine?’ They said: ‘Ten years, probably.’ But of course, we saw the most amazing scientific advancement of that work and we need to see that more generally.
“We’re constantly thinking of ways of supporting our staff and students to create more impact through their research and teaching. We’re funding entrepreneurship schemes, we’re investing in helping our academics to commercialise their research, we’re working with our partners to create more relationships with industry, social enterprise and Government and we’re putting innovation at the heart of the university alongside our research and teaching. Innovation is becoming a pillar of the university.
“Given the urgency and the scale of the challenge we face around climate change we’re going to need new ideas around clean energy, around how we design our cities and transport systems, around new materials and fundamental ways in which our economy and manufacturing work. We’ve also got to produce students who are going to be leaders of the future and tackle these challenges.”
The University of Manchester is famous for its expertise and cutting-edge research in many different sectors, but it particularly excels in advanced materials, addressing health inequalities, biotechnology, sustainable technology, digital technology (Alan Turing did his foundational work on artificial intelligence at Manchester) and the creative industries.
The University has pioneered a host of initiatives to harness innovation, develop entrepreneurship and drive growth in areas like these – “an entire eco-system” of innovation, says Professor Ivison.
In October 2024, the University launched Unit M to simplify and accelerate access to the University’s extensive innovation capabilities. It is designed to address all aspects of the innovation challenge by connecting the university’s cutting-edge research, innovation assets and talents with entrepreneurs, businesses and investors. Unit M recently announced a collaboration with Bupa, the international healthcare group, to develop new methods and strategies to reduce the healthcare sector’s environmental impact on the planet.
The university’s technology transfer office, Innovation Factory, helps to bring ideas to life through the commercialisation of intellectual property (IP) developed at the university. One of its recent success stories is Watercycle Technologies, a climate-tech spinout founded by two Manchester academics which provides sustainable solutions to mineral recovery and water processing around the world, creating clean drinkable water in the process.
Other initiatives include the Masood Entrepreneurship Centre, which helps to develop the entrepreneurial skills of the University’s 47,000 current students, as well as recent graduates and staff, and Sister, a joint venture between the university and property developer Bruntwood SciTech to develop a new innovation district in Manchester city centre.
Manchester is keen to work with other partners and has also announced collaborations with two other universities to turbocharge a more inclusive economy. Its partnership with the University of Cambridge aims to build closer relations between the two universities and their innovation ecosystems, attract more investment and accelerate the growth of start-ups and scale-ups.
Meanwhile the University of Manchester and the University of Liverpool have revealed plans for closer collaboration. They will work together to create ground-breaking innovations, develop the future workforce and draw on their respective academic expertise in areas like healthcare innovation, net zero and the creative industries.
“Innovation is a team sport,” says Professor Ivison. “The UK will not solve its productivity challenge and its growth challenge unless cities other than London really get their economic mojo back. We think we can go further when we work together. Universities need to collaborate much more deeply than they have up until now.”
Another priority for The University of Manchester is to close regional productivity gaps and break down barriers to opportunity through job creation.
“We want the Greater Manchester region to be an exemplar of the inclusive growth agenda,” says Professor Ivison.
“We want to bring the community along with us so we’re thinking hard about what inclusive growth means. It can’t just be about start-ups, venture capitalists and shiny tech companies, as important as they are. How do we inspire young people from Oldham, Wigan and some of the other boroughs and give them the opportunity to get better jobs and lift their educational aspirations? That’s really important to us.”
Looking to the future, Professor Ivison admits that “there are always things that we can do better” but urges the Government to “do no harm”.
“Let’s get some stability in the policy environment and the fiscal settings but then let’s think about how we can work together to help advance the Government’s ambitions around economic growth, around skills and around social cohesion,” he says.
“We really hope that the Government continues to invest in the research funding environment that’s currently in place. There’s a risk that it might be something they cut in difficult fiscal times, but it would be very short-sighted. If you don’t have high quality, basic research you have nothing to innovate with down the chain – so it’s very important.”
The economic and social impact of the University of Manchester: https://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=75326
