United Kingdom, experimentation
Business-funded R&D as the UK's dominant research sector
The Office for National Statistics reported that UK businesses performed £50.0 billion of R&D in 2023, 69% of the country's £72.6 billion gross domestic R&D total.
69 % of R&D, business share of uk-performed r&d, 2023. 50,000,000,000 GBP, business-performed r&d expenditure, 2023. UK Office for National Statistics, Gross domestic expenditure on research and development: UK 2023, retrieved 2026-08-31.
The move, and what it needed
The UK combines a large private R&D base with public research funding and tax support, leaving firms as the main performers of national R&D while universities and government supply complementary research and talent. The sector mix gives commercial problems a route into the research system, but it also makes the national portfolio sensitive to corporate concentration and cycles.
Preconditions
- Firms with the cash flow, engineering talent and appropriable returns needed to sustain R&D beyond a single grant
- Universities and public laboratories that train researchers and can collaborate with or supply firms
- Stable measurement, intellectual-property rules and public co-funding that make long-horizon private research investable
Where it travelled: A business-led R&D mix travels when private firms have reasons to keep investing and public institutions fill the basic-research and talent gaps; a high share alone can also reflect a few concentrated corporate laboratories.
Limits: The 69% share is a national R&D composition measure, not evidence that business research is basic, additional, productive or evenly distributed across firms and regions. ONS changed the business-survey methods for 2022, so the long historical series needs care; the figures measure R&D performed in UK organisations regardless of the ultimate owner's country.
This record describes what United Kingdom delivered. It is linked to Business share of R&D because no comparable dataset measures that capability. It does not affect the score or confidence.
More from United Kingdom
6 other deliveries from this country.
Sure Start children's centres, and their erosion
England built a national network of early-childhood centres reaching 3,632 sites by August 2009, then closed or hollowed out a large part of it after funding was cut, with the official count at 3,123 by October 2017 and independent estimates near 1,000 closures.
The United Kingdom's financial regulator built the first regulatory sandbox in 2016, and by the end of 2022 had accepted 168 firms and products to test with real customers under supervision.
Legally binding carbon budgets
The United Kingdom's 2008 Climate Change Act made five-year emissions budgets a standing legal cycle set twelve years ahead, and by July 2026 seven budgets covered 2008 through 2042 while the first three had been met.
Knowledge Transfer Partnerships
UKRI reported more than 1,000 Knowledge Transfer Partnerships running at one time and more than 1,100 Associate projects in May 2026, joining businesses with universities or other research organisations through jointly supervised innovation work.
British Patient Capital, a public venture-capital catalyst
The British Business Bank reported that government-owned British Patient Capital had committed £2.287 billion through 80 fund commitments, 10 co-investments and 18 Future Fund deals by 31 March 2024, with an underlying portfolio of 1,350 companies.
ICURe, from university research to spinouts
UK Research and Innovation's ICURe impact report says spinout companies from the programme secured £326 million in investment funding and created more than 1,400 jobs from 2014 onward, after research teams were trained and funded to test markets before deciding whether to spin out.
The same gap elsewhere
1 delivery linked to Business share of R&D in other countries.
EMBRAPII, industry-led applied research
Created in 2013, EMBRAPII connects companies to public and private research units through shared-risk funding, and it contracted a record 811 new industrial research projects in 2025.