Pictured above: David Hardman

Splitting up the area currently covered by Advantage West Midlands into around six Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) will adversely affect vital fledgling sectors such as knowledge-based businesses, reports David Hardman, managing director of Birmingham Science Park Aston.

Located on the edge of the city centre, Birmingham Science Park Aston - which has recently re-branded - is one of a select number of urban science parks within the UK. A re-directed strategy for growth has recently been implemented by the Park to encourage economic diversification by nurturing and promoting knowledge-based businesses.

David Hardman comments: "I believe addressing the fragmentation of the support provided by Advantage West Midlands (AWM) is essential if fledgling knowledge-based businesses are going to lead the region's economic recovery. In the absence of sufficiently large geographies, it will not be possible to cluster competencies and direct funding and commercial expertise in an effective fashion. The critical mass and sphere of influence that currently exists will be lost, which will mean that as a region, the West Midlands could fall further behind other parts of the UK and be unable to catalyse change and drive growth.

"LEPs are to be a fact of life and the degree of division will be defined by the final number of LEPs we will have within the region, but I believe our economy will be best served and supported if the existing infrastructure is utilised, which provides valuable mechanisms and impetus to drive the knowledge economy. I firmly believe that the most effective approach will be to bring together the network of science parks, innovation centres and incubators across the current AWM region to provide the necessary aggregation channels, transcending LEP administrative boundaries."

The Technology Strategy Board's own strategy defined in 2008 identified the need to 'simplify and streamline' innovation support mechanisms. Similarly, the previous Government's Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, which was created in 2007, presented a White Paper to Parliament in 2008 titled 'Innovation Nation'. The report suggested 'Innovation often does not obey artificial administrative boundaries' and proposed that the 'challenge is to create a framework at national and regional levels where activities to support innovation are focussed in co-operation between the different actors involved, who are responsive to different places and spatial levels and work across administrative boundaries.'

Lord Sainsbury's review of Government Science and Innovation policies, titled 'The Race to the Top', which was also published in 2008, then tasked the Regional Development Agencies (RDA's) with leading economic development by promoting a regional dimension to the national economic performance.

RDAs have since promoted 'Technopoles'; structures founded on people in a social environment that promote enterprise. The strength of a Technopole is defined by the region's 'Intellectual Capital' and the effectiveness of a region's ability to manage and develop its assets related to knowledge creation and exploitation. This is a function of the critical mass of entrepreneurs and experienced management, the relevant professional service provision, sources of the ideas and intellectual property, public and private sector funding and physical infrastructure such as innovation centres, incubators and science parks.   

David Hardman continues: "Technopoles and innovation ecologies are innately unstable if one or more of the components of the Intellectual Capital is weak or missing. The creation of the current administrative boundaries led to the UK innovation 'lake' being divided into RDA 'ponds' that often cannot support complete knowledge-economy eco-systems. The latest re-think takes the ponds and divides them into Local Enterprise Partnership 'puddles'. Within these puddles we are to be tasked with delivering local business activity directed by a national innovation agenda; a reflection of Sainsbury's 'Race to the Top' recommendations.

"A nationally driven innovation agenda with local delivery structures to support business growth and enterprise represents a clear disconnect. Given that innovation driven knowledge-economy companies have been identified as being key to economic diversification and growth, this disconnected support structure is a threat to the economic recovery.

"However, dismantling RDA-based enterprise support activities and regional 'seed' and 'early stage funds' and replacing them with a centralised offering will make these functions remote from the point of delivery. They will become irrelevant to the innovators and entrepreneurs looking to establish new ventures.

"If we are to deliver the local economic development, we will need to promote geographies spanning economic areas that can support sector-specific networks by transcending defined administrative boundaries. So there is a need for cross-LEP delivery mechanism, with direct links to high-tech/high-growth businesses. I would suggest the answer lies in actively linking the region's science parks, innovation centres and incubators to create a coherent network to support high-tech business creation and growth."

David Hardman continues: "Within Birmingham the objective should be to create interactive business support capabilities between Birmingham Science Park Aston, Birmingham Research Park, the Custard Factory, Fazeley Studios and Longbridge Technology Park. There would then be the potential for linkages across the new administrative boundaries to include the Warwick, Coventry, Keele, Wolverhampton, Telford and Malvern Hills Science Parks and also the Staffordshire Business Innovation Centre.

"In this way the national innovation agenda could be translated into activity across the West Midlands utilising a dynamic web of organisations that are already at the business creation and support coal-face. Each of the centres would link to their local LEP, but it would address the incomplete ecologies that will inevitably exist within the LEP puddles. . All of the centres already have linkages to business mentoring and support expertise, and as such, through the additional level of collaboration created by this structure, they could also address the potential down-side of the changes to the current Business Link offering." 

David Hardman concludes: "Science parks should be much more than real estate developments. They create innovation-based communities where proximity breeds success. By utilising modern communication technologies these communities can and should extend beyond the walls of the parks. While we plan how LEPs are to function, this is a plea to those leading the thinking to directly involve the science parks as delivery vehicles for economic regeneration."