City needs to innovate to thrive in "different world"

MANCHESTER needs to innovate to compete in the ‘different world’ created by the financial crisis, according to property advisory firm Atisreal.
Andrew Hamilton, who heads the firm’s office in the city, believes the strategy of wooing financial, banking and service sector businesses “may no longer
give us the edge over our competitors” because of the crisis in the
He told an audience of more than 150 business people at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall that the future key to the city’s success could be by capitalising on the academic sector, particularly the region’s “renowned universities”.
“These need to be invested in further, they need to be promoted and the talent pool retained in the city.We need to make sure we have an idea of where the next big thing may come from so that we could perhaps be the Silicon Valley or have the Microsoft of the 21st Century in the city.”
Mr Hamilton said that for economic success “high value specialised” manufacturing would need to sit alongside the knowledge sector.
He said Manchester had to accept that the investment landscape had changed and that Manchester and may not benefit to the same degree from the same level of central government assistance.
The seminar heard from Keith Steventon, Atisreal’s head of research, that the North West property market will begin to bounce back nest year.
According to Atisreal’s findings 2008 saw the worst falls in capital growth across the North West, industrial was the hardest hit sector with falls of 27% and the office and retail sectors saw falls of 25.4% and 25% respectively.
The commercial property market in the North West looks set to see capital growth continue to fall across all sectors this year with industrial values experiencing the biggest decrease of 12.7% whilst offices and retail will see falls of 9.2% and 8.6% respectively.
Mr Steventon said: “We believe that by 2011 we could see a significant improvement in capital values, leading to very high total returns as the market comes back. The return to growth is encouraging, but it will not be a miracle return to the boom years.”
Rental growth in the North West will experience the worst falls throughout 2009 as the financial and economic crisis continues to push values down; the retail market will see the largest decreases of 7.8% compared to 0% in 2008 whilst offices and industrial will experience falls of 7.4% compared to 1.1% and 6.9% compared to 1.1% respectively. This will begin to relatively improve throughout 2010, 2011 and into 2012.