Liverpool Science Park tapping into innovation and talent

Nov 26 2008 by Alex Turner, Liverpool Daily Post

The Innovation Centre _320

Liverpool Science Park’s chief talks to Alex Turner about the vision for a new £9m centre

LIVERPOOL Science Park will tonight launch the marketing drive for its new £9m Innovation Centre 2 (ic2), which will take its first tenants in March next year.

It marks the second phase of the development of the science park which opened in January, 2006, in the shadow of Liverpool’s Roman Catholic Cathedral.

The science park’s nearby 36,000 sq ft first phase, ic1, is 87% full – which science park chief executive Dr Sarah Tasker said is “full to us, because we want to retain space for companies that want to expand within the building”. Despite the long shadow the economy has cast over the commercial property sector in 2008, Dr Tasker remains optimistic about attracting occupiers to the new facility.

Ic2, which is “on target and on budget”, will double the capacity at Liverpool Science Park. It will provide 40,000 sq ft of office and laboratory-compatible space within Liverpool's Knowledge Quarter.

The science park is a key part of the city’s provision for companies working within the knowledge economy.

However, as Dr Tasker admits, it is not always easy to determine which sectors and businesses are part of the knowledge economy.

“It was easy 10 years ago to say who was a knowledge-economy business or not,” she said.

“These days, most companies have to stay ahead of the market and keep ahead of their competition.

“Companies at the science park need to demonstrate they are knowledge-based. That’s quite wide, but they need to be commercialising an intellectual property, or research forms a serious part of what they do, or be working with universities.”

A report last year by regeneration consultancy Regeneris, on behalf of Liverpool Vision, estimated that the Knowledge Quarter supported 14,000 full-time jobs in Liverpool and contributed 15% – about £1bn – of Liverpool’s total economic output.

It said the Knowledge Quarter – which includes the city’s three universities, Liverpool Science Park, Royal Liverpool University Hospital and Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine – influences the knowledge economy through research, knowledge transfer and its impact on the labour market.

Graduates from the universities boost the region’s economy by growing its highly-skilled workforce and the Merseyside Economic Review 2008, published by another economic development agency, The Mersey Partnership, estimated more than one in six graduates not originally from Merseyside stay on after finishing their studies.