A Q&A with Roz Bird four years into her CEO tenancy at Anglia Innovation Partnership
It’s four years since Roz Bird joined Anglia Innovation Partnership (the campus management company for Norwich Research Park) as its CEO and much has changed over that period. Norwich Research Park now has a long-term investor partnership which is funding the new Hawkmoth Building currently under construction. There has been significant growth in the number of businesses that are now established tenants and the pipeline to encourage new start-ups and spin-outs is being supported by a successful incubator programme and a new BioTransitions programme.
The Park’s UK and global profile has been raised thanks to a combination of greater media interest, outreach activities such as attending international trade shows and conferences plus the hosting of the highly successful Enterprise Showcase events. And there are now many more partnership projects established with industry being conducted across the campus.
With all this activity going on, we thought it was a good time to sit down with Roz and find out how she thinks things are going.
Q. Roz, how do you feel about the progress that has been made since your appointment?
“Well, I am very pleased to report that things are still on plan. A key element of the original plan was to understand the USP (unique selling point) of the campus, what makes it different to other locations, and then to bring it all together to promote it as a whole ecosystem. When I joined, companies and institutes co-existed on campus, but I think it’s fair to say there wasn’t a clear appreciation of just how significant their expertise was on a global scale or the best way to maximise the impact of the publicly-funded research being conducted here.”
Q. You have spoken about the importance of building a good ecosystem. What, for you, are the key elements and where are you currently in relation to achieving that at Norwich Research Park?
“Core to creating and nurturing ecosystem building a community of mutual regard, looking after the people already here and welcoming visitors. Having already built successful ecosystems at Granta Park, in Cambridge, and at Silverstone, in Northamptonshire, I arrived here with a good deal of experience and knowhow to help deliver the Norwich Research Park strategy.
“In simple terms, to attract people to your place, you need to focus on the human element of the proposition and the real estate in which they’ll work. When it comes to the people, you need to identify who your target audiences are and how your proposition matches what they are looking for, and then with real estate, it’s all about the buildings, planning, consent, maintenance and how long-term management . Get this right and you have the correct ingredients for successful placemaking!”
“Having the University of East Anglia (UEA) on our campus is a real plus. The real value of universities lies in their ability to attract exceptionally talented people from around the world. Companies then follow that talent. In other words, universities contribute most powerfully through the creation of a deep labour market of highly skilled scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs. I believe the talent pool itself is often the decisive factor in attracting companies to a specific location. That certainly seems to be the case here.”
Q. Looking back four years, what was the thing that really got you excited about coming to Norwich Research Park?
“There were several things that motivated me from day 1 such as the breadth and depth of research conducted on campus, the emerging enterprise culture and the interest, from the research community, to work more closely with industry. There were already a number of connections and partnerships thanks to the specialist technology platforms on campus. Supporting spinouts and working with industry is really important to help maximise the impact of publicly funded research.”
Q. What for you have been your key achievements?
“Long-term, probably the most important one was securing a real estate investment partner in Vengrove. That was a massive achievement. The Vengrove team understands the extensive campus-wide activity that is present here. Having them on board is a huge piece of our long term strategy jigsaw.
“The construction of the new 63,000 sq ft Hawkmoth Building means we now have the ability to deliver the range of accommodation and this is key to the delivery of the vision for the campus. Hawkmoth is just the first building in Vengrove’s 10-year plan to building out accommodation for high-growth businesses that want to benefit from close proximity to the research community.
“With Vengrove as our real estate investment partner, we have the ability to cater to companies needs now and in the future. Companies like ALORA and BugBiome can, and have, moved here, and can then stay here as they grow.
“I am also pleased that the list of virtual tenants is now much better than four years ago. Businesses pay to use the Norwich Research Park address and some even have multiple virtual tenancies for their different brands. Many of the original virtual tenants have gone on to become permanent tenants.
“Another great achievement by the Anglia Innovation Partnership team has been the growth and ambition of our Enterprise Showcase events. Their popularity and attendances have increased year-on-year so that we now pretty much fill the auditorium with a mix of academics, researchers, business owners, investors, professional service organisations, stakeholders and representatives from government agencies from London, Cambridge and abroad. These events are continuing to raise our profile and are creating real advocacy and building long-lasting relationships and partnerships.”
Q. In terms of policy and funding, how are you doing in your conversations with government, policymakers and funding agencies?
“It has been really important, over the last 12 to 24 months, to explain, and demonstrate, to new government representatives, and officials, that Norwich Research Park has the ability to deliver significant growth for the economy. I am pleased to report that the feedback has been as good as I could have hoped for with confirmation that central government understands the great potential opportunity for the campus to drive growth in the economy.
We have been supported by all of our local MPs who have been vocal in Parliament about Norwich Research Park and have been impressed by the work of our campus Public Affairs Group, providing objective academic advice on topics such as Precisions Breeding and Food Standards.
“Also representatives from our campus at companies, such as Tropic and ALORA, are being seen as experts on important topics like precision breeding. Both were called as witnesses to the recent Government inquiry into food security to explain the positive impact gene-editing can have in breeding new disease-resistant and higher yielding staple crops such as bananas and rice.”
“With numerous visits from organisations, government departments and overseas clusters, our international profile is increasing in the global markets we serve. Our active participation in industry bodies like the UK Science Parks Association (UKSPA) and International Association of Science Parks (IASP) means we are building very useful partnerships that will help us achieve our long-term goals. My aim is to work with the other important ecosystems, globally, to help global industry partners with access to support and innovative solutions.
“We have focused on raising the profile of the campus and communicating its strengths more effectively. There is definitely a growing ‘buzz’ on the campus in recent years and that has come, not from new science, but from changing how the story is told and how the campus engages externally.”
Q. One of your challenges has been to help translate discovery research into real world impacts. How well do you feel that is going?
“One of the core objectives across our campus is to ensure that the publicly-funded research carried out here has a positive economic impact, creating new jobs and helping existing industry to become more productive. A good example of the latter is a partnership project being delivered jointly by the John Innes Centre, Tropic and British Sugar to tackle Virus Yellows disease that can devastate sugar beet crops.
“To help maximise the value of publicly-funded research and demonstrate to Government that Norwich Research Park is a place worth investing in, we will deliver more initiatives like this, where we bring together scientists, researchers and business representatives to help solve industry problems. We are actively engaging the directors of our institutes to participate in these types of activities.
“For me, a science park ecosystem is fundamentally about interactions — the relationships between businesses, researchers, clinicians, investors, entrepreneurs and support organisations. A successful cluster is not simply defined by co-location, but by the quality of the connections between people.
“This requires active management and curation. My role, and that of the AIP team, is to build a thriving innovation community around the campus, bringing businesses together, organising networking activities and ensuring that companies become part of something larger than themselves.”
Q. In terms of growing the number of companies present on the campus what are you planning?
“We do need to help more companies to spin-out from the research conducted on our campus, to grow and to employ more people. We have an established incubator programme that helps researchers to take an idea from proof of concept to company creation and then help with raising pre-seed and seed funding. To complement this, we have just launched our new BioTransitions programme that will support companies at the next stage of their development from incubation which is at the seed to series A stage. Helping start-ups to truly accelerate into their chose market.
“We want to attract agri-tech spin-ins, from around the world, to join this new BioTransitions programme. Companies will benefit from our scientist’s expertise and access to our fantastic technology platforms to help them to develop their ideas, solutions and products.”
