A universities-Research England group is currently exploring whether London is an ‘ecosystem’ of the likes of Silicon Valley or Boston in the USA. We published in February our initial report with our model of an entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Notwithstanding the challenges and disruption of COVID-19, we believe that this topic remains vitally important as part of economic recovery, and we are seeking ecosystem builders elsewhere to compare approaches.
Although America is home to a number of the most prominent ecosystems, other US cities seek ways to join this route to economic development and, the American government is currently exploring how to support these further.
Entrepreneurial university ecosystems
We publish today a study from SQW with US and UK university-city-ecosystems matching detail. There are limitations to this work, notably any method is limited to metrics available across countries.
Given this was a pilot, the approach was minimalist, and clearly attention to a multitude of dimensions would improve match-making.
Our intention is to build on the study through conversations with comparators, including our initial target, New York, to test for the most insightful comparators, including how to pick the ‘right’ footprint of any ecosystem.
Our study highlights the sensitivity of this: as an example, picking San Francisco over the west coast Bay area. We note that American counterparts seem to pick their ecosystems differently for different technologies, for example a larger footprint for biotech with its need for R&D space.
The scale of America
Subject to these caveats, what leaps out in the report is the scale of America (Table 3-1 of report) in all dimensions:
- its research
- its universities
- its entrepreneurial outcomes
- the size of its cities
- its economic activity.
To dig into more detail on scale, as well as R&D differences, the make up of university sectors across the two countries is very different, with London having more than double the student numbers of Boston and Los Angeles, and similar student numbers to New York whilst having less than half the total population. This reflects the higher overall levels of expenditure on research in the USA.
Models for the UK
Leading edge American universities that we see as models for the UK are actually more akin to research institutes than UK institutions whose business models are founded more on teaching.
Although London produced a creditable 106 spinout companies over these three years, this performance is inevitably dwarfed by 260 in Boston, 364 in LA and 178 in New York.
A focus on IP income in the same timeframe shows the same picture, with London generating £166 million to:
- Boston’s £778 million
- LA’s £1.51 billion
- New York’s £1.15 billion.
Although LA and New York are supercity sized compared to London in terms of population and economic output, interestingly Boston is half the population size of London, though with comparable economic output.
Performance and scale
It is important though to distinguish between university performance and scale.
London is actually more efficient in turning R&D expenditure into spinout companies, producing a spinout for every £35.35 million R&D input compared with £60.42 million, £42.60 million and £54.5 million for Boston, LA and New York(1).
This is also highlighted in the report published today by Research England on commercialisation data, which compares US and UK university sector wide commercialisation performance and shows distribution of US and UK activity once normalised for scale is very similar
Scale matters
There is a wealth of evidence (though not all straightforward(2)) that suggests scale and density matter in clusters.
Knowledge intensive workers congregate together. These dense connections spur innovations. There is more likelihood of the high risk-taking needed in entrepreneurship, particularly in very speculative deep tech and knowledge intensive forms, occurring in dense agglomerations.
These clusters reduce the consequences (and hence fear) of failure. Entrepreneurs have many fall back options if one venture fails. It is also easier to justify and to get value from the specialised ecosystem components that accelerate innovation and entrepreneurship if it is provided at scale.
We should not, though, jump to conclusions. We will consider the SQW proposal of scaling US ecosystems to match with UK. But we also want to look at Europe and Middle East comparisons: Paris, Tel Aviv, Nordic models, to understand ecosystems in smaller nations.
Impact on policy and practice
First, the government’s roadmap commitment to increase public spending on R&D to £22 billion is vitally important as hitting directly on the scale issue, alongside the developments in the roadmap focused on:
- innovation
- commercialisation
- regional clustering.
At the practice level, we need to consider whether we have the imagination, will and connectivity to think and do big: embracing not just London, but possibly a greater south-east cluster (with systems of equivalent scale needed across UK?).
Our initial worry was that London was too big to think about as an ecosystem, but possibly it is too small?
References
1. Source: 2018/19 HE-BCI data (London) and 2018 AUTM – STATT Survey (LA,Boston and New York)
2. For example: Cooke, Philip & Asheim, Björn & Martin, Ron. (2006). Clusters & Regional Development.
Alice Frost is the Director of Knowledge Exchange Policy at Research England, one of UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) nine councils.
She is responsible for knowledge exchange policy and funding at Research England, and a lead expert at UKRI on commercialisation. Her background is in national policy for research, universities, innovation and economic development. Over many years, Alice has advised countries across Europe and Asia on the UK model of a third stream of funding for knowledge exchange.