I DON'T think in the current economic climate you can underestimate the importance of either innovation or international trade and for Glasgow, these two areas are critical for the city’s development.
It's crucial that we invest in innovation as a catalyst for developing a longer-term plan that will maximise our regional innovation assets. Glasgow City Region has three key innovation districts including Glasgow City Innovation District (GCID) based at University of Strathclyde, University of Glasgow’s Riverside Innovation District (GRID) and the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District adjacent to Glasgow Airport.
Together these offer a tangible investment in future industries – ranging from enabling engineering technologies and artificial intelligence at GCID, precision medicine and nanofabrication at GRID and advanced manufacturing next to the airport.
We now have additional policy and financial backing for the growth of these districts from last February's Levelling Up White Paper announcement of a £100m fund for the UK’s three largest city regions outside London, including Glasgow.
The public sector will be vital to developing these hubs further and HSBC UK and Centre for Cities has just published a new report that explores the geography of the UK’s new economy and makes policy recommendations to help seize the opportunities of the growing technology sector.
Most notably, it recommends a £14.5 billion growth package (drawn mostly from existing funding) to build innovation districts in Birmingham, Glasgow, and Manchester over 10 years, funding infrastructure upgrades and boosting research and development (R&D) to help make these cities more attractive to new economy industries.
Glasgow clearly shows great potential as an innovation hub and is already home to nearly a quarter of Scotland’s 4,470 "new economy" firms. However, given its size, the city should be playing a larger role in both the Scottish and UK economies.
An excellent example of investment in tech in Glasgow was recently announced by Bruntwood SciTech (the new owners of the Met Tower which famously sits just off George Square with the People Make Glasgow branding).
Jamie Clyde, Innovation Services Director at Bruntwood SciTech, spoke eloquently at the recent State of the City's Economy Conference about the imminent £60m investment in the property and how Glasgow is an exceptionally vibrant city and offers one of Europe’s most exciting, diverse tech and digital clusters and has significant growth potential.
Having seen some of the highest growth in the whole of the UK in the past two years, Glasgow’s science and tech sector now makes up 28% of all jobs in the city. Bruntwood SciTech’s expansion into Scotland is part of their commitment to develop and support these ecosystems by providing new state-of-the-art spaces for tech and digital businesses to start, scale, collaborate and co-innovate.
The link between innovation and international trade is critical to ensuring that Glasgow continues to develop these new sectors.
We know that businesses and economies operating across a range of markets will tend to be more resilient and less vulnerable to economic shocks which is why at two recent trade missions from Germany and Zimbabwe it was encouraging to hear Glasgow-based businesses present this positive, forward-thinking approach to international trade.
One of these firms was Alter Technology which is part of the Tuv Nord Group and has a base in the Technology Innovation Centre building at University of Strathclyde and provide contact package design and precision assembly for a wide range of optoelectronic devices.
From reduced energy consumption in data centres to less fertiliser use, through the reduced use of resources in manufacturing, photonics is a driver of global sustainability and Glasgow is a global leader in delivering this innovative new sector.
Giving the new economy and these types of businesses the right conditions to flourish is vital to improving Scotland and the UK’s productivity and prosperity. These innovation hubs are creating and encouraging a thriving, market-leading, internationally-focused ecosystem of businesses in the city and contributing to the future success of our economy.
Richard Muir is Deputy Chief Executive of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce
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