Oxford 'Science Cities' Report part three
Above: final panel discussion at 'Science Cities Oxford' with (from right) Jim Wilkinson, CFO of Oxford Science Enterprises, Eugene Sayers, Partner and Head of Science at Sheppard Robson, Professor Chas Bountra, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Innovation, Oxford University, Heather Fearfield, Co-founder Future Cities Forum, Professor Gino Martini, Director of the Precision Healthcare Technologies Accelerator (Birmingham Health Innovation Campus), Les Lindsay, President (EMEA), Kiffik Biomedical Inc., Professor Margarethe Theseira, Head of consulting, Buro Happold and Gareth Roberts, Head of Development - Innovation and Life Sciences, British Land PLC (On screen is a CGI of the Ellison Institute adjacent to the Oxford Science Park in East Oxford)
In the final part of Future Cities Forum's Oxford 'Science Cities' report (based on its discussion event held at Said Business School, University of Oxford), the panel was asked the question - 'how can the UK - and Oxfordshire and Birmingham specifically - compete globally on the commercialisation of intellectual property?'
Jim Wilkinson, CFO of Oxford Science Enterprises, described the organisation's journey to source suitable space for growing science companies.
'We started in 2015, with our first office in the Bodleian Library, then in King Charles House by the station. We were fortunate to be allowed to invest £600m into Oxford University's spin-outs, now worth one billion. At the time we thought this was the biggest unexploited pile of intellectual property in the world and that something could be done about that. I thought the problem would be management but in fact it was property. There was only 100 square feet of wet lab space available. We had 20 wet lab companies stuck in the university. We started talking to property people. We paid £250,000 to Nuffield College to develop a wet lab site but it did not happen, though it was always obvious that the Botley Road area would be ideal for new wet labs. Instead we went to the Oxford Science Park to create space..
'However nine years on and we have partners in Pioneer and the Crown Estate (converting the redundant Debenhams store in central Oxford for commercial science among other projects across the UK), and the demand for space from companies is there. I am relieved we have developer Mission Street working on sites near the station and the Botley Road and also British Land developing space on the retail park.'
In May this year, OSE announced that the site of the former Debenhams in Oxford would soon be transformed into a c.100,000 sq ft life sciences, technology and innovation space in the heart of the city. It stated that The Crown Estate partnership with Oxford Science Enterprises and Pioneer Group would provide vital lab space in the region:
Jim continued:
'The project represents an initial investment of c.£125 million by The Crown Estate, marking the start of a partnership that has a long-term ambition to invest up to £1.5 billion to support the UK’s science, technology and innovation sectors.'
Answering a question about whether OSE is taking too much money in fees from its investments in the university's IP Jim replied:
'No. We go and find a piece of IP in the University, to make money for the University and spin it out. The University spends £950 million on research and IP per year and prior to capital arriving in the form of OSE, Oxford only span out three to four companies a year. Boston, in contrast, has a billion dollars spent each year on science research (so less than Oxford) but creates 25 to 30 companies annually.
'So the aim has always been - can we in Oxford create an ecosystem with lots of funders, lots of research and lots of suitable property? It's a long term project. and if we can achieve this then it's job done! The first two properties for spin-outs we did at cost, as we needed to get them a home, but as we became more sophisticated we realised the property for the companies needed to last a lot longer and required more thought and design hence the need for our property partners.'
Image: Cornmarket, Oxford, where the Clarendon Centre is being developed into new lab space.
Professor Chas Bountra, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Innovation at Oxford University (and the Head of Impact and Innovation in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine), took the discussion further on the drive to remain competitive for translating science innovation into commercial success:
'I sit in a very privileged position. As a university we now we get more research income annually - one billion pounds - than any other university in the country, and we get more business income too, and more philanthropic income. Thanks to the genius of Jim we now get more venture capital income than any other university, and we create - at an average of twenty five plus per year - more spin-out companies. Jim and I and colleagues talk regularly about creating more 'unicorns' worth over £10bn and worth over £100bn in the next 5 years. However by 2050 we want to create in Oxfordshire the first trillion pound company. If you take Stanford University in California it sits in close proximity to seven companies each worth over one trillion dollars while in Europe we have none. However I am very clear we can do this, as we have lots of strengths.
'Life sciences is an obvious strength but so is AI and also quantum physics, robotics, motorsports, energy, publishing and autonomous vehicles, as well as space, cyber-security and energy. I am not just talking about the universities here, but the clusters at Harwell and Culham and other science parks. The University has created over 300 companies and they are sitting on the perimeter of Oxford, so I am very excited about the future.
'We have had a cultural revolution in Oxford in the past decade. It started with Jim and OSE being set up. Before that we used to create around four companies a year, but now it has climbed to over twenty. We have several academics who are serial entrepreneurs, having set up two to four companies each. A couple of years ago we did 31 spin-outs which is more than any other university on the planet. Now the students, research staff and post graduates here look at these academic serial entrepreneurs and say 'I could do that!'.
'The second culture change came during the pandemic. Everyone saw what we could do. We worked with AstraZeneca, with the Government, with the regulators, and the research institute in India, and we created a vaccine that went into three and half billion human arms and got the world out of the pandemic.
'Larry Ellison, the co-founder of software company Oracle, is coming to Oxfordshire. He has has built a house here and is bringing his family over, and putting a billion pounds into the Oxford science park creating new buildings The reason for him coming to Oxfordshire is because of the university, and the talent and the clusters we have in this space and so let's build on this.'
When asked about Oxford University and AstraZeneca not taking any profits from the Covid-19 vaccine, Professor Bountra responded:
'That was a deliberate policy.. I credit the genius of Vice Chancellor Louise Richardson and Sir John Bell for that. We said we did not want to make any money out of the pandemic but rather wanted to consider the health impact on populations across the globe. I don't think any other university on the planet would have done that. I do buy into the narrative that we have colleagues working across every space from life sciences to space to agriculture, and the university has one of the strongest brands on the planet, and great networks of influence in business and governments. There are 400,00 of our alumni spread across the world and many want to help us solve major problems. I am not worried about creating billion pound companies but the focus - with Jim of OSE - is how we scale them up.'
'AI will be transformative in every area of life. We also have incredible resources in the social sciences humanities. That is why a few years ago, Steve Schwarzman gave £195m to Oxford University to develop an AI institute.'
Professor Gino Martini, Head of the Precision Healthcare Technologies Accelerator, joined the conversation to comment from the Birmingham and West Midlands perspective:
'To me I think we should be working co-operatively. I got here in an hour today down the M40 and we are also only 90 minutes from Cambridge. So I think we should be working as a 'super-cluster'. How can we do the best for the UK? At the PHTA I am running a business for the University of Birmingham. The hospital there - the Queen Elizabeth - is big as is the population. How do we help the UK? We need to provide a resource and infrastructure for our best university spin-outs. There will be 20 spaces for scale ups on the campus. Everyone, from anywhere in the UK, can use this space. There is hybrid space for clinicians and researchers to use. We are not open yet, as we were slowed down by the extra expense caused by construction materials inflation.
'We can provide both temporary homes and expansion space for the Oxford spin-outs, and we are looking at a collaboration with Jim Wilkinson of OSE to do this. We will have failed if our spin-outs in the UK go abroad to scale-up and grow. The route to keeping these businesses in the UK is via forming a 'super-cluster'.'
Kiffik Biomedical's President for Europe / EMEA, Les Lindsay, based at the PHTA, commented:
'We are in the diagnostics space and we have chosen to open our first R&D office in UK with Gino at the PHTA. Why did we go there? The healthcare professor at a recent conference said 'we want Birmingham to be a global centre of excellence for diagnostics. That vision and clarity of purpose by the institutions helps the commercial side of a diagnostics company. Gino has also been very active in making introductions for us to clinicians and to funding bodies. My problem is that I am American-owned and that has been a barrier to UK finance. The investor community is overwhelmed with choice. I will not be taken seriously unless I have two million pounds set up with a product ready for the NHS to use and also for export.'
According to the company, Kiffik has developed 'a novel technology that allows completely non-invasive access to interstitial fluid that fits in a wearable connected device capable of transmitting health data from nearly anywhere in the world.'
Gareth Roberts of British Land added his thoughts on the challenges of where will the investment come from, and where will growing science companies find space:
'We are leaning in via a partnership model. In the specialist arena of science and technology we are progressing this with three MoU's (memoranda of understanding) with leading institutions - the Francis Crick, UCL and with King's College London. These MoU's are about access to people, events and equipment that support that business journey. We have done this with the Crick with 30,000 square feet of new fitted lab space in the Knowledge Quarter near King's Cross and Euston to provide scale up space. These are institutions that businesses want to cluster around.
'The second way is anchored towards smaller businesses that are managing an extended funding time-line and trying to delay decisions for as long as possible as the elevated cost of funding for these businesses has meant that property is less affordable. We are trying to bridge these business relationships with the scale-ups who may go on to become the one to ten billion pound businesses that Professor Chas Bountra has described. We want to operate at scale so we are investing in providing space for this stage of business.'
There has been some suggestion that the UK government may be moving towards curtailing objections towards planning for new projects and reducing the opportunity to comment from a community perspective. There has also been a well-documented anti-development campaign in the science city of Oxford. Margarethe Theseira, Head of Consulting at Buro Happold was asked to comment on the role of community engagement and consultation:
'Many research projects show that communities across Oxfordshire are quite anti-development. One of the things we do at Buro Happold is work with communities to find out what their needs are. We have heard a lot about global talent today but the pressing question is what will the life sciences sector do to help the career path of young people of who live here already. How can they attract young people into STEM careers, understand training schemes, and and make the developments relevant for people who do not have PhDs?
'We are working with New York City on a life sciences strategy, on lab design at Oxford North, helping the Crown Estate on the transformation of Debenhams, and working on master planning at Begbroke Innovation District. We also support Royal London Asset Management across its portfolio of projects.
'With community engagement in mind we developed the Flourishing Index with Manchester University. This is community led but we test it to see how they use the spaces. What could be provided better in terms of facilities? Sometimes it is an activation programme rather than a physical asset. I heard a really nice example by Cambridge Science Park director Jane Hutchins of local people dog walking on the science campuses.
'We uses sensors to track and provide data on how a development is used. One project identified that young women and girls were not using the sports facilities that had been made. As a result the developer then put in football training schemes for girls to use the sports facilities and this became a success.'
Image: MIX Manchester, courtesy of Sheppard Robson
How do other cities in the UK, particularly in the North of England, hope to compete with investment and development, as well as talent attraction, in London and the OxCam Arc?
Eugene Sayers, Partner and Head of Science at architects Sheppard Robson articulated why well designed environments are an essential component in attracting and retaining the best science talent. He described the practice's approach at MIX Manchester, formerly Airport City.
'It's incredibly well connected and it's only 12 km from centre of Manchester. Compare that journey with travel from centre of London to Heathrow, which is much further. .
The basic premise is that it will be flex. It will provide nose to tail spaces for companies. There will be proper room for R&D, scale up and also for manufacturing. You won't have that issue of having to move a long way as your company grows.
Eugene was asked whether these new science centres feel like really welcoming places, or whether many people would prefer to work and live within the variety and interest of an historic urban setting. He responded:
'That is one of the challenges we face as architects, and we appreciate the richness of ancient cities. We can't replace the patina of time, but we can avoid some of the mistakes of the recent past, so we can provide a reason for people to come into the city and also...to balance scale. There are a number of levers we can use to pull people in to make it attractive, even when commerce is the primary activity'
Sheppard Robson describes the levers to attract tenants:
'The masterplan focuses on a series of neighbourhood blocks and a centralised pedestrianised town square, providing clusters of activity at a local level, allowing the site to develop sequentially over several phases. By integrating hotels, shared amenities and F&B/leisure facilities into these neighbourhoods, we have created active frontages and vibrant, people-focused spaces that encourage community and foster a sense of identity for tenants. A hierarchy of movement puts sustainable modes of transport at the heart of the site, with vehicular access and servicing infrastructure to the perimeter of the neighbourhood blocks. Our integrated approach to the public realm, landscape and placemaking provides structure to the masterplan, linking the neighbourhood blocks and providing a network of connections that promote interaction, communication and collaboration.'
Eugene was asked whether outside cities like Oxford, despite continuing to design new science parks, we should try to preserve the heritage of older sites. He said:
'We did a study of the science parks on the 30th anniversary of the UK Science Park Association to review the building types. Many are legacy of the second world war in aviation, science and the military. Part of being a good designer is not obliterating that legacy but building on it. However many were temporary buildings and were made for a specific purpose, and we need to be unsentimental about what we keep'.
Image: MIX Manchester, courtesy of Sheppard Robson
In conclusion, Professor Chas Bountra summed up - noting the variety of science parks that are being built within the UK -suggesting that each site adds up to a positive for the economic wellbeing of the country:
'Sometimes competition is a good thing as it makes for urgency. We need to be positive and supportive of each other and be more ambitious. My expertise is in medicine but I do lose sleep over the climate emergency. The world may be shaky over the next few years. I don't like it when we lose companies to the USA but there is so much more funding there. We must try to attract more of the North American talent over here.
'One place won't solve every problem, but as a country we tick all the boxes. I really like what Jim and Gino are planning. It will be good for Oxford companies to set up in Birmingham as it has a large population and the cost of housing is lower.'.
Future Cities Forum would like to thank all the contributors to its Oxford 'Science Cities' and looks forward to debating the opportunities and challenges in other towns and cities such as Stevenage and Cambridge, this May and September.
Image: Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst, where Future Cities Forum will be hosted this May
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