Pictured L-R, UKSPA Chair John Leake; Ebba Lund, CEO of IASP; Richard O’Boyle, CEO of Pioneer Group; Dean Cook, Director for Place and Levelling Up at Innovative UK.
The rise of innovation districts and the opportunity for a major funding injection from the UK’s pension funds will both play a major role in the future of science parks,
A round-table discussion looking ahead, at the 40th anniversary conference of the UK Science Park Association at Warwick University, looked at trends both at home and abroad.
Ebba Lund, chief executive of the International Association of Science Parks (IASP) provided a sneak peak of new research.
With 350 members across 76 countries, the IASP links science and technology parks, innovation districts, areas of innovation, knowledge cities, tech zones and other innovation spaces and is also celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.
Ebba Lund said there was a growing diversity in terms of models in sites, in finding schemes and in the types of company based there.
“We really see an industry that continues to grow. The majority of organisations have expansion plans and also we see more and more science and technology parks – around 38% – who have multiple sites. Some of that is because they need to allocate room for new services, but sometimes it’s also just to broaden the influence of a specific science park model that is successful.
“We also have seen changes in ownership. The majority are still public projects, but we see also purely private science parks in our industry and also the public-private partnership model is increasingly relevant.”
Many science and technology parks were increasingly hybrid spaces with more territorial influences and increased collaboration with their surrounding community; “They work outside the walls, outside the traditionally designated area.”
Specialisation is also a growing trend and, while science park companies are predominantly local and national, international companies had grown from just 4% of the total in 2005 to 16% today.
In addition, for the first time, there is now a higher percentage of women on the management teams of science parks and innovation districts, at 53.5%.
Dean Cook, executive lead for Place and Levelling Up at Innovate UK, said there was increasing collaboration at a local and regional level, with the new combined authorities and devolved governments, developing larger clusters.
There was increasing focus on place, in terms of levelling up, and ensuring that a larger proportion of the uplift in R&D spending was targeted outside the greater South East.
“Places know their ambitions and their capabilities and their opportunities better than the centre does, but what the centre is uniquely positioned to do is to connect places to those wider opportunities, whether that’s connecting innovators in one place to other parts of the country or to provide those global pathways for the partnership,” said Mr Cook.
“We collaborate with our fundings, the national to local, but then we also need to make sure that we use that funding really carefully as seed capital, and we use it to leverage private sector investment. And this is where the potential of science parks is really quite exciting.”
The next step for the science park movement, he said was something more strategic; “The Innovation district concept is quite intriguing. When you see property developers being able to have mixed models where they’re bringing in residential property and development so they can make their returns. So I think it’s quite exciting when things are moving.”
Richard O’Boyle, CEO of the Pioneer Group, which owns and operates 10 innovation-focused campuses, has a strong property investment background. He said: “I think collaboration is the key. We talk of the triple helix of government – local and national – combined with academia and with private funding. Real estate is part of that; it is the enabler for the sector.”
He also raised the topic of Mansion House 2.0 – “It’s coming hopefully, and when it does it’s good news for the country.”
The Mansion House Compact is a voluntary agreement between UK pension schemes to increase investment in unlisted equities which could see £50 billion released by 2030. The money would support investment into the UK’s most promising high-growth companies, particularly those in the life sciences field.
Author: Simon Penfold
Photography Credit: Ed Nix
