KU Leuven Research & Development (LRD) — University Spin-off & Technology Transfer Office

KU Leuven Research & Development (LRD) is the university's technology-transfer office, operating since 1972 to manage intellectual property arising from KU Leuven research and to support the creation of spin-off companies across the university's faculties in Leuven, Belgium.

LRD's role is to translate university research and IP into commercially viable spin-off companies and licensing deals.

LRD assists researchers during the start-up phase and guides them through the process of translating a business idea into a real company, managing IP across all university faculties.

By 2025, LRD had supported the creation of 199 spin-off companies since the early 1980s — including 10 new spin-offs launched in 2025 alone — which together employ more than 7,700 people, according to LRD's own published figures. Independently, the European Patent Office's 2025 statistics rank KU Leuven joint-third among European universities for patent applications (103, tied with EPFL), behind only DTU (113). KU Leuven topped Reuters' ranking of Europe's Most Innovative Universities for multiple consecutive years (2016-2019).

The Reuters ranking is based on patent filings and their real-world citation by industry — external validation of LRD's commercialisation performance rather than a self-reported claim alone; however LRD's own site does not disclose spin-off survival rates or a year-by-year breakdown of jobs, so the 7,700-jobs figure is a cumulative, undated total rather than a current snapshot.