A lot of money has been spent on technology parks around the UK, the latest to be announced is the £8.2m Thames Innovation Centre in Erith.
This centre, we are promised, is intended to house “knowledge-led companies working in engineering, science and the creative arts”. I’m not sure that the creative arts necessarily fits naturally alongside the science and engineering markets but my point really is the amount of money going into this.
It is £8.2m because it is a fancy-pants building, solar panels on the roof, geothermic heating, intelligent lighting and a windmill in the car park to power embedded seat-lighting in the conference room (sorry, I lied about the windmill).
My real worry is that we are setting up technology parks all over the UK but we are not going to have any start-ups to put in them. There is currently a disgraceful mis-funding of the Science and Technology Facilities Council in the UK in which a £80m shortfall threatens job losses at universities and cuts in physics research programmes.
We must fund real, proper hard-work sciences and engineering projects. It is these that build into companies with unique technologies. This insane technology park fetish really angered me when I happened to browse the list of firms based at Coventry University’s Technology Park. Take a look; the lack of real engineering firms is painfully apparent. Out of 24 firms listed, I think I can only say that two are hardware technology companies and there are a lot of Internet-learning type of companies.
So, invest your £8.2m in fancy buildings but if you don’t fund real technology research in the UK, expect many of the firms there to be more of the “creative arts”-type of technology company.
Comments (1)
How refreshing to hear some common sense for a change. We are a relatively young technology company based in Sheffield. Our first premises were in a "Technology Park" where we were supposed to feel at home surrounded by the type of support and advice relative to our industry!
Out of the dozen businesses housed at the Sheffield Technology Park, we were one of 3 that did anything remotely to do with IT. The rest of the companies ranged from Internet-based marketing companies (well who doesn't use the Internet to market their company nowadays - so are we all now classed as technology businesses) and a fair few motivational speakers (see your blog on Start-Up conferences - if more people were successful at doing it they wouldn't be trying to make a living just talking about it, is my view).
In the year we were "incubated" we received NO specialist support or advice from the business advisors who had no experience of working in the technology industry. We left after finding it impossible to get the support to grow our business from the Park and moved into normal business premises, where we are flourishing!
To make matters even more sour grapes, the local council have just given another couple of million for them to open a THIRD site! It beggars belief! Why couldn't the money have been put into encouraging the companies that are already here and struggling to cope with the global competion from the big boys!
Who knows, perhaps Sheffield is short of motivational speakers!
Posted by Deborah Adshead | March 26, 2008 12:11 PM
Posted on March 26, 2008 12:11