So, here we are toiling away in the midst of recession. Low growth, high costs and to cap it all summer’s been rained off. Dreary doesn’t even come close.
Don’t you just wish you were somewhere that had prospects?
Fantasise for a minute – just imagine what business would be like if you were in a place where someone was spending a bit of money - £500m here, £140m there, with the odd £60m thrown in somewhere else.
In this climate? You are having a laugh...
Well, if you still think that’s fantasy land, the joke’s on you: it’s actually Nottingham. Now.
The £500m is the vast civil engineering project that will turn the one-line tram into a fully-fledged three-line network. It’s underway now.
The £140m is the [scandalously overdue] scheme to turn Nottingham’s southern link to the M1, East Midlands Airport and the East Midlands Parkway railway station into a fast dual carriageway. It starts in January.
The £60m? Well, it’s actually £120m – one £60m sum is earmarked for the transformation of Nottingham Railway Station into a transport interchange connecting rail, road and tram, the other £60m is the combined sum Nottingham can lever to deliver the schemes which comprise a Government-approved City Deal programme.
So let’s just tot all that spending up for a minute: that’s £760 million of confirmed investment in your city. When Capital Shopping Centres finally get round to revamping Broadmarsh and the Vic Centre (2014, according to an analysis last month) it will take that figure up to around £1 billion.
One. Billion. Pounds.
Doesn’t seem quite so dreary out there now, does it? At least I hope it doesn’t – and this is the point: I’m really not sure people have woken up to what’s about to happen here.
Okay, it won’t happen overnight. Large-scale schemes take large-scale planning and the wheels of an advanced, mature democracy turn irritatingly slowly (particularly in Whitehall, currently way out in the lead for the ‘Plain Useless at Getting the Money Out’ prize).
But these projects will create jobs before, during and after they are completed.
The infrastructure investments offer the prospect of turning Nottingham into one of the best business locations in Britain for connecting commerce, customers and workforce.
In some ways it’s the City Deal and the Growth Plan which supports it that offers the most tantalising prospect, because it provides an answer to a big question: Where does Nottingham’s economy go from here?
The slow decline of traditional manufacturing here meant the city didn’t suffer an economic shock. But this slow transition left it far too dependent on the service sector/public sector, which together accounts for more than 80% of jobs.
You can’t grow business services when business isn’t growing and the public sector is actually contracting. So we have to grow in a new direction.
We already have some established traction in life sciences which was present through Boots’ old drug discovery activities, has been continued in university R&D programmes, and is being commercialised on a substantial scale at BioCity.
There are substantial research activities, too, in sustainable environmental technologies and a kernel of promising ‘clean tech’ businesses.
There are also clusters of coders and programmers in this city, working in fields ranging from advanced, niche data analytics through to the production of blockbusting computer games. Digital content, they call it.
So, massive investment, promising new industries. What’s the missing link?
There are a three of them, actually.
One is an education system which manufactures the raw material these and other businesses need – skilled, well-qualified kids who leave schools and colleges with attributes which satisfy employers, rather than the insanity of a system which allows kids to pick dud subjects which satisfy nothing other than a meaningless educational KPI.
The second is encouraging enterprise through meaningful advice from people who’ve done it. Formal training goes only so far – wise words from people who’ve tasted failure to find success counts for much more.
Finally, Nottingham’s massive potential should be supported by a big, bold message. We have a story to tell about big things that are going to happen and major opportunities that will emerge.
Have we just bought ourselves a new future? You decide.
Showing posts with label BioCity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BioCity. Show all posts
Monday, 16 July 2012
Friday, 18 May 2012
Nottingham: Creating the Creative City?
Last year, I did an interview with Adam Bird, the Chief Technology Officer of the Nottingham-based technology company Esendex, and Toby Reid, the former civil engineer and one-time entrepreneur who is now director at BioCity Nottingham.
The interview centred around a discussion of Nottingham’s nascent tech community, exploring the kind of people and businesses who make it tick, and seeking to understand the kind of lifestyle and environment that encourages people like them to put down roots in a particular place.
At the time, the geeks and techies were feeling a bit unloved, as if Nottingham’s leaders were too busy wondering where the next office block might come from to notice that they had the potential gold dust that is knowledge and intellectual property growing under their very noses.
Since then, they’ve got noticed. Esendex was one of the first businesses to become part of the Invest in Nottingham’s Club’s creative class, a group of poster boys and girls for the emerging knowledge-based business community.
It’s the way of news that not all the work you put into a story makes it into print, and one of the shortcomings of the article was the omission of another interview I did to get an informed ‘outside’ perspective on what Nottingham needed to do to nurture and grow more creatives.
The interview was with Lucy Marcus, the American-born (but UK domiciled) technology investment consultant who is also a sought-after commentator on business and business ethics. She’s known to quite a few people in Nottingham through her links with BioCity’s investment fund.
I came across my notes again the other day, and what leapt out during the conversation with her was the answer she gave to the question of what the city’s authorities should be doing to support its creative class.
I’ll let the original unpublished article below do the talking. It’s something not just for creatives and technology companies to dwell on, but also Nottingham City Council, which is still working on its Economic Growth Strategy.
Put simply, it should think extremely carefully before it makes any commitment to create growth itself. And may be it should pick up the phone and give Lucy a call.
Here’s the article, see what you think – feedback would be welcome.
Lucy P. Marcus has long experience of the difficulties businesses face when they try to get recognition for creative original thinking.
The chief executive of Marcus Venture Consulting, she advises early stage technology companies on the best way to connect with venture capital. She also chairs the Mobius Life Sciences Fund at BioCity.
Marcus also has a unique perspective on the Nottingham economy. Born in the USA, she was a high flyer who worked for the US Government before coming to the UK.
Her verdict on the city’s emerging creative community is that it’s an important part of the Nottingham economy – but must find its own way ahead.
“I think one thing that would puzzle me a little is why it would be a big thing for them to get the city on board,” she told Business Post.
“A creative entrepreneurial spirit and the eco-support system for it is not something which can be engineered. It just happens.
“The lifestyle around it is important, the universities can feed into the development of it, but its development will tend to be organic rather than structured. Entrepreneurs are all about doing it themselves.”
Marcus says the sector must have some momentum and “density” if Nottingham is going to become recognised by potential financial backers as a centre for the growth of creative technological businesses. “It’s got to be obvious that there is a lot going on here,” she says.
Nationally, talk about the growth of creative business has been made fashionable by a cluster of web-based technology businesses in London’s Shoreditch that have become collectively known as Silicon Roundabout.
“People were priced out of London and they found a place with cheap rents and good facilities where creatives could gather,” says Marcus.
“Nottingham has got the DNA to make this happen. We have the universities, we have the graduates. If we make it attractive for them to stay, if there are companies for them to work for, then they will stay.
“But if it’s going to happen it will happen naturally – you can’t manufacture a sector through city policy.”
I’m going to revisit this issue from time to time, because it’s an important one. In the meantime I’d also recommend those who are interested in this kind of thing sample a couple of chunky pieces of brain-food.
One is Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class, the book which was probably the first serious analysis of this new breed. It first came out years ago, but is well worth revisiting for first principles.
The second is a more recent tome, urban economist Edward Glaeser’s The Triumph of the City. This, I think, raises some really big questions about the way Nottingham views itself and the world it’s part of.
The interview centred around a discussion of Nottingham’s nascent tech community, exploring the kind of people and businesses who make it tick, and seeking to understand the kind of lifestyle and environment that encourages people like them to put down roots in a particular place.
At the time, the geeks and techies were feeling a bit unloved, as if Nottingham’s leaders were too busy wondering where the next office block might come from to notice that they had the potential gold dust that is knowledge and intellectual property growing under their very noses.
Since then, they’ve got noticed. Esendex was one of the first businesses to become part of the Invest in Nottingham’s Club’s creative class, a group of poster boys and girls for the emerging knowledge-based business community.
It’s the way of news that not all the work you put into a story makes it into print, and one of the shortcomings of the article was the omission of another interview I did to get an informed ‘outside’ perspective on what Nottingham needed to do to nurture and grow more creatives.
The interview was with Lucy Marcus, the American-born (but UK domiciled) technology investment consultant who is also a sought-after commentator on business and business ethics. She’s known to quite a few people in Nottingham through her links with BioCity’s investment fund.
I came across my notes again the other day, and what leapt out during the conversation with her was the answer she gave to the question of what the city’s authorities should be doing to support its creative class.
I’ll let the original unpublished article below do the talking. It’s something not just for creatives and technology companies to dwell on, but also Nottingham City Council, which is still working on its Economic Growth Strategy.
Put simply, it should think extremely carefully before it makes any commitment to create growth itself. And may be it should pick up the phone and give Lucy a call.
Here’s the article, see what you think – feedback would be welcome.
Lucy P. Marcus has long experience of the difficulties businesses face when they try to get recognition for creative original thinking.
The chief executive of Marcus Venture Consulting, she advises early stage technology companies on the best way to connect with venture capital. She also chairs the Mobius Life Sciences Fund at BioCity.
Marcus also has a unique perspective on the Nottingham economy. Born in the USA, she was a high flyer who worked for the US Government before coming to the UK.
Her verdict on the city’s emerging creative community is that it’s an important part of the Nottingham economy – but must find its own way ahead.
“I think one thing that would puzzle me a little is why it would be a big thing for them to get the city on board,” she told Business Post.
“A creative entrepreneurial spirit and the eco-support system for it is not something which can be engineered. It just happens.
“The lifestyle around it is important, the universities can feed into the development of it, but its development will tend to be organic rather than structured. Entrepreneurs are all about doing it themselves.”
Marcus says the sector must have some momentum and “density” if Nottingham is going to become recognised by potential financial backers as a centre for the growth of creative technological businesses. “It’s got to be obvious that there is a lot going on here,” she says.
Nationally, talk about the growth of creative business has been made fashionable by a cluster of web-based technology businesses in London’s Shoreditch that have become collectively known as Silicon Roundabout.
“People were priced out of London and they found a place with cheap rents and good facilities where creatives could gather,” says Marcus.
“Nottingham has got the DNA to make this happen. We have the universities, we have the graduates. If we make it attractive for them to stay, if there are companies for them to work for, then they will stay.
“But if it’s going to happen it will happen naturally – you can’t manufacture a sector through city policy.”
I’m going to revisit this issue from time to time, because it’s an important one. In the meantime I’d also recommend those who are interested in this kind of thing sample a couple of chunky pieces of brain-food.
One is Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class, the book which was probably the first serious analysis of this new breed. It first came out years ago, but is well worth revisiting for first principles.
The second is a more recent tome, urban economist Edward Glaeser’s The Triumph of the City. This, I think, raises some really big questions about the way Nottingham views itself and the world it’s part of.
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