Rethinking University Innovation in Central Asia: Learning from UK Universities expensive lessons

A webinar examining the UK university commercialisation experience provided 60 Central Asian professionals from Kazakhstan with a roadmap for avoiding costly mistakes whilst building effective innovation pipelines.

Learning from the UK's Expensive Lessons

The United Kingdom represents an opportunity and a cautionary tale for Central Asian universities. With 240,000 academics producing world-leading research (41% rated as such by the Research Excellence Framework; REF 2021, HEFCE), Britain should dominate university commercialisation. Instead, the system generates merely 150 spinouts annually from around 1,000 proposals (Beauhurst, 2022). This means roughly 1,600 researchers are needed per successful venture, with only 0.42% of academics engaging in commercialisation efforts (HESA, 2023).

During a recent Kazakhstan Science Fund webinar, UK experts deliberately exposed these British failures to 60 regional university professionals. As one expert noted, “You cannot take something from one place and just drop it into another place and expect it to work in exactly the same way.” Kazakhstan has an opportunity to design better systems by understanding what works and what goes wrong in established markets.

Photo by Bunly Hort on Unsplash

UK Structural Failures Reveal Deeper Systemic Issues

The systematic analysis of UK problems revealed interconnected issues that compound each other. The most striking discovery: only 0.42% of UK academics submit commercialisation proposals annually (HESA, 2023), creating what participants immediately recognised as their own “narrow funnel entrance” problem.

This low engagement stems from fundamental misalignment between academic incentives and commercialisation goals. British universities reward faculty advancement through teaching excellence and research publication, making innovation a career distraction rather than asset. Academics who publish research give away intellectual property for free, whilst those who commercialise face complex negotiations and uncertain outcomes.

The problem deepens when researchers do engage. UK universities create adversarial IP negotiations where technology transfer offices, representing institutional interests, negotiate against the very spinouts they're meant to enable. According to a 2023 University of Cambridge survey, 73% of spinout founders described the IP negotiation process as “traumatic” or “adversarial” (Cambridge Enterprise, 2023).

Universities compound these failures through risk-averse selection processes. Only one-third of UK proposals receive institutional approval, with preference given to “guaranteed successes.” This gatekeeping mentality, driven by universities' desire to protect their reputations, systematically excludes breakthrough innovations that inherently carry higher uncertainty.

The timing failure represents perhaps the most wasteful inefficiency. UK institutions perfect technology in laboratory isolation before testing market demand. They frequently discover customer indifference only after significant resource investment. This sequential approach contradicts basic entrepreneurial principles about early market validation (Blank & Dorf, 2012; Ries, 2011).

Kazakh participants immediately related these patterns to their own institutional challenges. Regional representatives identified an “absence of incentive mechanisms to do startups,” whilst others noted researchers remain “more interested in pure research, instead of building a potential product for business.” The recognition was universal: Central Asian universities faced identical structural problems—without having invested decades building them.

How Can Kazakhstan Design Superior Systems?

Given these UK structural flaws and their compound effects, how can Central Asian universities build more effective commercialisation capabilities from the outset?

The recommendations emerged directly from UK failure analysis. Kazakhstan can create explicit career advancement criteria rewarding commercialisation alongside traditional academic metrics—something Britain never systematically implemented. According to Kazakhstan's Digital Development Ministry, the country aims to increase technology transfer by 300% by 2027 (Ministry of Digital Development of Kazakhstan, 2023), creating institutional pressure for these reforms.

Central Asian institutions can publish transparent IP licencing templates from the beginning, avoiding the adversarial dynamics that plague UK universities. Most significantly, Kazakhstan can mandate parallel market validation and technical development from project inception. The principle is clear: “The market and the technology must run in parallel, not in series” (Blank & Dorf, 2012).

However, implementation will face challenges. Central Asian universities often lack dedicated technology transfer expertise, and faculty may resist new evaluation criteria. Limited venture capital availability in the region could constrain spinout funding. Additionally, smaller domestic markets may require earlier international expansion, adding complexity.

Photo by Nethmi Muthugala on Unsplash

Despite these obstacles, the strategic advantage remains clear. By learning from Britain's expensive structural mistakes, Central Asian institutions can build innovation pipelines that outperform established systems from day one.

References

• ·Beauhurst (2022). University Spinouts Report. Available at: https://www.beauhurst.com/research/university-spinouts/

• ·Blank, S. & Dorf, B. (2012). The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company.

• ·Cambridge Enterprise (2023). Cambridge Enterprise is the commercialisation and spin-out arm of the University of Cambridge and is the body responsible for converting university innovation into commercialisation. This is from their spin-out survey report. Spinout Survey Report. University of Cambridge.

• ·HEFCE (2021). Higher education Research Excellence Framework (REF).

• ·HESA (2023). Higher Education Staff Statistics. Available at: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/staff

• Ministry of Digital Development of Kazakhstan (2023). Digital Kazakhstan Strategy. Available at: https://www.gov.kz/memleket/entities/mdai

• ·Ries, E. (2011). The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses.