Welcome
Welcome to the UK Innovation Districts Group Monthly Digest. Join us as we explore trends, lessons and new insights into innovation, regeneration, inclusive growth, placemaking and the sustainable and accessible creation of Innovation Districts and Knowledge Quarters.
The UKIDG is a network of eight self-defined innovation districts from across the UK including: Glasgow Riverside Innovation District; Knowledge Quarter Liverpool, Leeds Innovation District, Knowledge Quarter London, Belfast Harbour, Bristol Temple Quarter, Newcastle Helix and Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. As a group, we aim to make the case for our urban centres and their potential to advance research in areas such as AI, medical sciences and the humanities, while growing the UK’s wider economy.
Each of our Monthly Digests is dedicated to ensuring that you are kept up to date with the latest thought leadership and research in this area.
Top Stories
Racial Disparities in Innovation
Nesta have posted an article highlighting stark racial disparities in innovation and how exploring the causes should be the first step in beginning to address this widespread problem.
READ MORE
Other News
Catapult have released the first Connected Places Podcast “What now for the future of planning?”
Westminster Forum Projects upcoming, online conference , will focus on The future of the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) and Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF)
Aretian has developed a systematic study of the 50 most powerful innovation districts of the United States: their specialisation, economic impact, and the characteristics of the urban ecosystems that welcome and enhance them. See the work, the Atlas of innovation districts, as a PDF here.
AHURI report Supporting employment in smart cities through affordable housing explores what possibilities for affordable housing are provided by innovation districts (and by ‘smart city’ strategies), especially for regional and outer metropolitan areas. See the PDF report here.
Nesta article explores how We need a research body in which communities see themselves represented
Urban planning often neglects or harms communities of colour by cutting them out of the decision-making process. BlackSpace, a US collective of architects, designers, artists, and urban planners, is quietly working to change that. Read the article here.
Innovate UK blog post explores How innovation is extending the reach of geospatial intelligence.
Earlier this year, Paul Cleal OBE featured on The Social Mobility Podcast in episode “It’s about society, and it’s about forward motion” discussing why he believes diversity and inclusion need our full attention
Imperial White city has launched their new scale up community for growth companies, called Scale Space.
Partner News
UK Innovation Districts Group are really excited to announce that Belfast Harbour, Bristol Temple Quarter and Newcastle Helix have recently joined as partners. We’re thrilled to be welcoming them on board.
Knowledge Quarter London are holding a Virtual Community Champions Event to link into their 2020 Community Champions series, ensuring KQ membership stays connected to local communities.
Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park London has just completed the final week their annual East Summer School , this year as a virtual platform.
Innovations welcome!
Please feel free to share this newsletter
and encourage others to sign up.
If you have suggestions of articles or projects for us to feature,
we’d love to hear from you.
For more information about the UK IDG and member registration
Find us at:
hello@UKInnovationDistricts.co.uk
www.UKInnovationDistricts.co.uk
To join our mailing list please subscribe.
Copyright © 2019 UK Innovation Districts Group, All rights reserved.
Welcome
Welcome to the UK Innovation Districts Group Monthly Digest. Join us as we explore trends, lessons and new insights into innovation, regeneration, inclusive growth, placemaking and the sustainable and accessible creation of Innovation Districts and Knowledge Quarters.
The UKIDG is a network of five self-defined innovation districts from across the UK including: Glasgow Riverside Innovation District; Knowledge Quarter Liverpool, Leeds Innovation District, Knowledge Quarter London; and Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. As a group, we aim to make the case for our urban centres and their potential to advance research in areas such as AI, medical sciences and the humanities, while growing the UK’s wider economy.
Each of our Monthly Digests is dedicated to ensuring that you are kept up to date with the latest thought leadership and research in this area.
Top Stories
Nesta
Nesta have published a report looking at how innovation testbeds are being used to safely test out innovation and new technologies in the Real World.
READ MORE
Other News
BEIS have published their first version of UK Research and Development Roadmap. The government’s Research and Development (R&D) Roadmap sets out the UK’s vision and ambition for science, research and innovation. UK IDG will be submitting a response to inform the final roadmap.
Innovate UK have released a new report, Supporting Diversity and Inclusion in Innovation, which outlines barriers, challenges, opportunities and support needs for minority ethnic groups and disabled people to participate in business innovation.
The Centric Lab have released a podcast: Biological Inequality | Covid19, BAME Communities And Urban Stressors.
DfT and BEIS have committed £350 million to fuel green recovery, announcing the funding is being made available to cut emissions in heavy industry and drive economic recovery from coronavirus.
Bruntwood SciTech have published a report called Place Matters: Innovation And Growth In The UK which identifies innovation districts as a mechanism for inclusive, regional growth across the UK.
Innovate UK’s rolling applications are open for their Knowledge Transfer Partnerships. Helping UK businesses to innovate and grow by funding partnerships with researchers and academics.
BEIS have announced Millions could be vaccinated against Covid-19 as UK secures strong portfolio of promising vaccines with the UK securing early access to 90 million doses of promising coronavirus vaccine candidates.
The Centric Lab have published a research paper called, Neuroscience, Urban Regeneration and Urban Health.
Nesta have written an article called Innovation After Lock Down on their blog, exploring how the UK’s approach to innovation policy will need to change to kick start and rebuild our stalled economy.
Metro Politics have published an article called Community-Rooted Organisations: Enhanced Accountability and Capacity Building for Community Development.
Partner News
Earlier this month UK Innovation Districts Group submitted a written response to the BEIS Post-pandemic economic growth working group to aid in the UK’s economic recovery from Covid-19. The submission, focuses on innovation districts and their key place in driving inclusive and sustainable, economic growth. A PDF of the submission can be found here
Knowledge Quarter Liverpool have launched their 5 year strategic vision to power Liverpool’s innovation-led economic recovery plan.
Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park London is currently running their annual East Summer School on a virtual platform this year on the Olympic Park.
Innovations welcome!
Please feel free to share this newsletter
and encourage others to sign up.
If you have suggestions of articles or projects for us to feature,
we’d love to hear from you.
For more information about the UK IDG and member registration
Find us at:
hello@UKInnovationDistricts.co.uk
www.UKInnovationDistricts.co.uk
To join our mailing list please subscribe.
Copyright © 2019 UK Innovation Districts Group, All rights reserved.
Welcome
Welcome to the UK Innovation Districts Group Monthly Digest. Join us as we explore trends, lessons and new insights into innovation, regeneration, inclusive growth, placemaking and the sustainable and accessible creation of Innovation Districts and Knowledge Quarters.
This month the Black Lives Matter movement has been at the forefront of our thoughts with protests for long overdue change taking place around the world. Shining a light on how racism is structural and systemic with many of our long-standing systems and frameworks truly unjust. There’s now cause for many organisations, institutions and individuals to reflect on how they operate and what changes can be made.
Again and again it is proven that diversity of thought makes us stronger, in fact, innovation districts are fueled by this. They are an intersection of many different sectors, typologies and crucially, people. Mix and diversity of fresh thought is needed to make innovation districts work. We have always championed the business need for inclusive growth, along side the moral need, and the necessity to be more inclusive and diverse has never been felt more strongly. We have an opportunity to change things for the better; to demonstrate commitment to inclusive growth through stronger civic engagement and ensuring the voices that are heard are those that truly represent the places we are building.
UK Innovation Districts Group is committed to learning and using it’s platform to support the BLM movement, as we stand in solidarity with our black partners and peers. We acknowledge that we need to do better and that this is the time for us all to reflect, act and truly deliver inclusive places.
Top Stories
How to Restart an Inclusive Economy
ACH have launched a report setting out the vital importance of valuing black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities and businesses in the road to recovery. The document outlines how to kick-start economic recovery in a truly inclusive way in Bristol.
READ MORE
Other News
BEIS are convening business focused, economic recover working groups. The outputs from these roundtables will feed directly into the government’s work on economic recovery. As a group the UK IDG aims to be a contributor.
Nesta has published an article focusing on the role of innovation agencies in the support for businesses and innovators in the time of Covid-19.
DCMS have announced future trade strategy for the UK tech industry. These new measures are to boost digital trade and help turn the UK into a global tech powerhouse.
The Guardian have published an article discussing the need for a serious urban regeneration plan after Covid-19.
University of Birmingham have published an update Realising the Potential of Inclusive Growth: Lessons From USE-IT on their blog.
Project for public places have posted 5 takeaways from their webinar Don’t Look Back: Equity and Recovery in Public Space During COVID-19 focusing on the importance of inclusive public spaces.
BSA Scotland have launched a report Inclusive and Sustainable Growth: 10 Lessons from Lockdown.
Centre for Cities latest podcast, City talks, discusses Face-to-face interaction and why cities still matter in the information age.
Partner News
London Partners Knowledge Quarter London and Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park have launched a research paper together with NLA exploring the growth in knowledge-intensive industries across London, Oxford and Cambridge, known as the ‘Golden Triangle’, and examines how the knowledge economy can be strengthened across this region.
Liverpool has set out a £1.4BN 5-Year Coronavirus recovery plan that could deliver more that 40,000 jobs and apprenticeships.
Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park is launching an open competition for a service provider to run it’s Good Growth Hub.
Innovations welcome!
Please feel free to share this newsletter
and encourage others to sign up.
If you have suggestions of articles or projects for us to feature,
we’d love to hear from you.
For more information about the UK IDG and member registration
Find us at:
hello@UKInnovationDistricts.co.uk
www.UKInnovationDistricts.co.uk
To join our mailing list please subscribe.
Copyright © 2019 UK Innovation Districts Group, All rights reserved.
“ Cities will bounce back, and their role in providing the right places and networks to support innovation and growth will be more important now than ever ”
The Covid-19 crisis poses big questions for cities. Throughout history people, businesses, knowledge producing organisations such as universities, cultural bodies and professional institutions, and investors have been attracted to cities because of the concentrations, diversity and flows of ideas and opportunities they provide, enabled by density, access to a large workforce via the public transport network, and close networks of face-to-face collaboration. These trends have led to the emergence of innovation districts in city centres and well-connected nodes in the UK as well as globally. These very factors that have underpinned the success of cities are now challenged by a new, dangerous, communicable disease, physical and social distancing, and the experience of mass working from home. Why locate and force people to commute to and cluster in urban centres when there is the risk of disease and we can work from our homes?
But cities will bounce back, and their role in providing the right places and networks to support innovation and growth will be more important now than ever for six reasons.
First, it is in cities where we have the best prospects for the rapid innovation needed to tackle societal and health challenges. We need rapid innovation to tackle the crisis and its implications. Cities and innovation districts can connect innovators, entrepreneurs, the health and social care system and other providers of public services to work together to tackle societal and health challenges. The focus could be on products and services which would realistically and significantly meet a societal need that has emerged or increased due to the Covid-19 pandemic, or the need of an industry that has been severely impacted and disrupted. This could be in the field of healthcare, public health, community support, online and home delivery. This could be part of a wider mission-orientated approach to supporting innovation-driven economic growth. A £20 million competition has been launched by Innovate UK to support firms responding to new and urgent needs as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Second, now is an opportunity to use our cities and innovation districts as test-beds. The real world will look and operate differently as we move out of lockdown into a test-trace-isolate phase. We will need to rapidly change the way we manage transport systems, buildings and urban logistics. For example, cities are reallocating road-space from cars to pedestrians and cyclists, and the Government have announced a trial of drone delivery of medical supplies. There may be new use cases and increased demand for autonomous transport, for example the type of driverless pods that have been trialled at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Research by Arup for Nesta has looked at how cities can develop tools for testing innovation in the real world. Once we move into the economic recovery phase, test-beds can have a continued role.
Third, building ecosystems for innovation-led entrepreneurship can be part of the recovery plan. Our cities will need to shape and help deliver a major economic stimulus package of regeneration, infrastructure, housing and economic growth projects to kickstart economic recovery. Think a modern-day Marshall plan to put in place the building blocks for a more productive future economy. This needs to encompass soft infrastructure as well as physical projects. Cities should get behind innovative start-ups and scale-ups. These high growth businesses, which make a huge contribution to the economy through their investment in people, technology and innovation, are likely to find securing finance harder. Cities and Government should back innovation districts as projects that can kickstart and sustain the right type of future growth.
Fourth, collaboration in cities will become more, not less important, and we need to design and curate our physical spaces accordingly. Firms and organisations are already reflecting on what they have learned in recent weeks to consider the future for their offices and estates. Whilst there is scope for them to have less office space, they are also experiencing the inefficiencies of mass working from home, the challenges in collaborating across disciplines and organisations, the difficulties in building the relationships and implicit trust that come from face-to-face discussions, the sheer time and energy required to run a Zoom meeting compared to a physical one, the loneliness and lack of fun and enjoyment. This experience will re-enforce the need for firms to have the right office space in urban areas. They may need less of it, and its primary function may shift towards supporting collaboration and away from providing banks of desks. People will want to interact, to share ideas, and to share each other’s company in urban spaces between the buildings. Offices, campuses and urban spaces may be reconfigured around a primary function of supporting collaboration and interaction, away from providing desk capacity.
Fifth, inclusive growth will become an even more important policy priority. This crisis is going to lead to a huge shake-out in the labour market. Entrepreneurship could offer a new career path for people who have lost their jobs. There will be a need and an opportunity for many people to gain new skills as employment in some sectors decreases, and opportunities are created in others. The organisations involved in innovation districts have a role to play here in supporting people to adapt and rebuild their careers. We need to use this opportunity to consider how we value, pay and offer better security key workers in sectors such as health, social care, retail, deliveries and hospitality. We should consider how we can reshape the labour market in these sectors, many of which have to date been associated with low wage, low skilled, and insecure work.
The Centre for Progressive Policy has predicted that places with weaker economies will be hit hardest. Some of these cities and towns could create their own innovation districts, or projects to support people to start and scale up innovative and creative firms. There is an opportunity to strengthen and the role of healthcare providers as anchor institutions for growth. We can build on the community led and volunteer networks that have been established to support our neighbours, or vulnerable or lonely people. We need to consider the intergenerational dimension. Older people are most vulnerable to this disease and will suffer most from shielding, but younger people are seeing their education, careers and livelihoods being damaged significantly. We need a model that supports and values older people (there is an opportunity here for innovation districts as is being demonstrated by Newcastle’s National Innovation Centre for Ageing) as well as creating a more resilient and sustainable model of growth to benefit future generations.
Finally, history has shown us cities adapt and change in response to health risks and shocks. As Ed Glaeser has written, cities and pandemics have a long history. Throughout history, cities and towns have needed to strike a balancing act between providing the densities that support the collaboration, knowledge and innovation needed to accelerate economic growth, whilst also addressing the public health risks that density creates. In 1854 John Snow meticulously mapped the London cholera outbreak, identifying the source (a water pump). The Victorians built sanitation systems and hospitals and made health breakthroughs. Florence Nightingale advised on the design of the new Leeds General Infirmary that was opened in 1869. Liverpool created the first public baths of any city, and the world’s first school of tropical medicine. In what is today the London Knowledge Quarter hormones, vitamins and the structure of DNA were discovered. We are now going to need to adapt our cities once again.
After 9/11 many commentators predicted fundamental changes in urban areas, for example a shift away from tall buildings, and global travel. Instead we adapted our cities and transport networks with security measures to respond to the new normal.
With the growth of the internet and global communications, many predicted the death of cities and densities. In reality, as the economy has become more specialised, knowledge based and focused on intangibles, face-to-face proximity has become more, not less important. This will continue. Smart people will still want to work alongside other smart people, and collaborate, compare and compete in the spaces between the buildings. Knowledge producing firms and institutions will still want to be close to each other and have access to a skilled and creative workforce across a wide area. All of this will need to be supported by the right supply and curation of commercial space and formal and informal public and social spaces, and the right networks between corporates, start-ups and scale-ups, universities and major cultural institutions, investors, and city governments.
Whilst our towns and cities will be different as a result of this crisis, they will be central to the huge economic recovery effort needed. As Ed Glaeser has argued, “We have built our modern world around proximity, and Covid-19 has made the costs of that closeness painfully obvious. We can either reorient ourselves around distance or recommit ourselves to waging war against density’s greatest enemy: contagious disease.”
The challenges are significant. We have some difficult days ahead. Cities can shape and support the recovery, and build better, fairer, more resilient, sustainable and productive economies, and innovation districts have a huge role to play.
Article written by Tom Bridges, Arup’s Leeds Office Leader and Director Cities Advisory, in partnership with UK IDG
Yesterday, the UK Innovation Districts Group convened a great roundtable event at Nexus Innovation Centre coinciding with a week-long MIT teaching visit hosted by Team Leeds who are participating in the MIT Regional Entrepreneurship Accelerator Programme (REAP)
The roundtable was a senior strategic discussion around the launch of a pilot REAP UK Lite programme, exploring place-based innovation and the importance of networks & soft assets in maximising success. This is the first time MIT have delivered a condensed version of the REAP programme (over 6-9 months) and across a national UK cohort – a really exciting prospect with potential for rich transferable learning.
The six REAP Lite regions (delivered through the LEPs) are:
1) Leicester and Leicestershire LEP
2) Cumbria, Lancashire; and Cheshire & Warrington LEPs
3) North East LEP
4) West Midlands Combined Authority
5) Sheffield City Region LEP
6) Heart of the South West LEP
Key voices in the discussion included BEIS, Arup, MIT, Research England, Team Leeds, Innovate UK and of course, UK IDG partners.
Download Full Citizen Based Social Innovation Report.
Innovation isn’t all about Tech. Though often the big tech rapid scale up innovations dominate the headlines, increasingly there is growing interest in social innovation processes and priorities.
In order to showcase practical examples of this from around the world, two UK IDG members, KX Knowledge Quarter and Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, jointly commissioned this report on citizen based social innovations and what can be learnt from them