Multi-owned innovation districts with multiple stakeholders – how are these providing competition and opportunity for STPs and more intensively managed AOIs?

R&D intensive businesses are increasingly driven to locate in relatively central, accessible districts. In our major cities the districts that attract such businesses can change very fast, creating places that offer a level of accessibility and vibrancy that conventional Science and Technology Parks (STPs)and Areas of Innovation (AOIs) are now finding they compete with. 

These districts can become phenomenally creative and powerful for our sector without pro-active planning and without apparent intervention.  As they start to become established there is evidence that local stakeholders seek to form groups that can help with co-ordination, community development and forward planning.  In London and Cambridge it would appear that the new districts are creating their own markets.  Nevertheless, it is necessary for STPs and AOIs to take steps to take advantage of these developments, and build their own attractiveness and competitiveness.  These include building connectivity, soft infrastructure and specialist buildings/support.