Hardman: Localism agenda threatens innovation’
THE MAN who described new Local Enterprise Partnerships as ‘puddles ’ that were too small to be effective has turned his sights on the Government’s Localism agenda.
Dr David Hardman, chief executive of Birmingham Science Park Aston said there was a risk that the proposals in the White Paper ‘Local Growth: Realising Every Place’s Potential’ could lead to fragmentation, duplication and inequalities across the UK’s business start-up centres, which are primarily focused in science parks.
He said: “The Localism agenda is not a positive step forward for science parks. There is an ever increasing need for science parks to operate on a truly global scale, while the transition in the UK from RDA ‘ponds’ to LEP ‘puddles’ actually works against this essential natural progression to global – rather than local – thinking. The digital economy is a vital tool to leverage growth across the globe by connecting geographic locations and needs to be more effectively harnessed.”
The science park has teamed up with Cisco and Tata Communications to make expensive video conferencing and collaborative systems available to small startup businesses, creating what Dr Hardman describes as the UK’s first ‘science park without walls’.
Dr Hardman said: “While international cultures cannot easily be transplanted, ideas and strategies from one part of the world can stimulate – and even finance – innovations elsewhere. It is crucial to the next generation of successful new hi-tech businesses that science parks drive borderless rather than purely local innovation.
Dr Hardman said said the concept of creating a proposed national network of ‘Growth Hubs’ should be created by linking up the UK’s key science parks to work across Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) boundaries.
“Capitalising on the potential of our ‘science park without walls’ initiative,” he said, “Birmingham Science Park Aston is perfectly placed to be at the forefront of the Government’s network of ‘Growth Hubs’.”
“RDAs compartmentalised the UK innovation ‘lake’ into ‘ponds’ and now the new boundaries of the Local Enterprise Partnerships will create ‘puddles’. This will not assist the UK’s science park movement to work together and drive the economy out of recession. While only 3.4 per cent of Whitehall’s total budget is spent on business growth, even Cameron himself acknowledged in a recent speech that just six per cent of UK businesses are high-growth, but they generated over half of the net employment growth between 2005 and 2008.
“Science parks already have the infrastructure, expertise and specialist support networks to nurture start-ups – particularly hi-tech start-ups – which have the potential to become high growth companies and diversify the economy. Rather than limiting access to resources, science parks need to be given special consideration outside of the small geographies of the proposed LEPs structure, where in the instance of the West Midlands, six LEPs are being proposed to replace Advantage West Midlands.”
