International ambitions for innovation campus preparing to scale

Innovation Birmingham and its new owners Bruntwood are developing plans to create an internationally-recognised destination for innovative businesses as part of ambitious long-term plans.

The digital and technology campus has immediate demand which it is currently unable to fulfil while it is also looking at how the park can develop to maximise the long-term opportunities of a buoyant city region that is central to the rebalancing agenda.

Bruntwood regional director Rob Valentine

Bruntwood’s regional director Rob Valentine said: “There’s a need, recognised both from Westminster and certainly from the regions, that the regions need to be playing more of a role in the economic drivers for the UK and innovation has to be at the core of that – the new businesses of the future, effectively.

“Our vision is to ensure that Birmingham is part of that story.”

Property group Bruntwood bought Innovation Birmingham from Birmingham City Council in March, in a deal that was one of the highlights from MIPIM.

Innovation Birmingham is home to 140 businesses in the city, from start-ups to stock market-listed Internet of Things company LightwaveRF.

As well as incubator and office space, it is also home to accelerator programmes including Serendip Smart City Incubator, Entrepreneurs for the Future, and Innovation Engine.

Dr David Hardman, chief executive of Innovation Birmingham, said: “We’ve been on a 10-year journey that has taken us from a science park, that had become a real estate deal that was financially viable, through to a a very small innovation campus that just about kept its head above water. But it has created a focal point people now recognize as a place for digital innovation.

“We needed to scale. We were not going to be able to do that – and the city council recognised that – in the previous ownership structure.”

Plans on how to achieve that are under discussion, combining the knowledge in Innovation Birmingham with Bruntwood’s experience elsewhere, which includes Alderley Park in Cheshire, Manchester Science Partnerships and recently-launched tech incubators in Manchester and Leeds.

One of those opportunities is collaborating with other regional innovation districts to create an build with scale. It’s notable the distance from Birmingham to Manchester is almost exactly the same as Oxford to Cambridge, two corners of the golden triangle.

Innovation Birmingham chief executive Dr David Hardman

“We need to look north in collaboration as opposed to south with envy,” said Hardman.

“We’ve got to create a critical mass and we can do that to a certain extent – obviously the scale of Birmingham itself is a critical mass.

“But if we link that innovation with the innovation that’s going on in the northern cities, or indeed in other cities outside the golden triangle, there’s a real opportunity to create something.”

The ambition, though, starts with a clear focus on what can be achieved at Innovation Birmingham, which is on the edge of the city centre next to Aston University and Birmingham City University campuses. Strong relationships with universities, as well as the city council, LEPs and business, are a key part of how it can be at the heart of an innovation ecosystem that really binds the campus into the city’s progress.

“We need to be creating an environment so that when we are developing our young people we want to develop them here and develop their ideas here and help them become as successful as they possibly can be. We have started to do this as a city,” added Valentine.

“We are starting to get a lot of attention, both nationally and internationally, about being a destination for inward investment.

“So we want to create an environment – not on our own but with the universities and the city council and others – where international business and international digital technical business looks at Birmingham and says ‘we need to have a presence there’. Whether that’s four desks to begin with or ultimately whether that’s a HQ-type innovative tech building and everything in between.

“To deliver that, we’ve got to create something quite special.”