Collaboration, the need to attract and retain talent, and access to funding were repeatedly brought up as the most pressing issues by representatives from some of the biggest names in science and technology – and the owners of the buildings in which they operate.
More than 300 attendees at EG and Bidwells’ day-long Creating a Scientific Superpower conference, held in London on 20 June, heard from industry and real estate experts about the challenges and opportunities in the sector, with a particular focus on the Oxford-Cambridge Arc.
Chas Bountra, pro vice-chancellor for innovation at the University of Oxford, put collaboration at the heart of his keynote address by highlighting the work that took place to develop a Covid-19 vaccine as quickly as was achieved.
“Together we can do amazing things,” Bountra said, emphasising the urgency of responding quickly both to growing cases of diseases as well as the climate change crisis.
“We have to be optimistic,” he added. “Let’s work together. Let’s create new industries. Let’s solve some of the big global challenges. And in the process, let’s help the UK economy.”
Partnerships with academia
Bountra’s confidence comes from a faith in the NHS, universities, infrastructure and the UK’s “brand name”, to name a few. He said: “We just need to recognise that there is no one person, no one institution, no one organisation that can tackle these challenges alone. We have to come together. We have to break down boundaries. I think we have to be humble about what are our weaknesses – because we can’t be good at everything.”
Karen Holford, vice-chancellor at Cranfield University, has seen the collaboration in the region first-hand since arriving at the university some 10 months ago.
“I saw the bedrock of the UK’s innovation, I saw great collaboration in the Arc universities and the willingness to work together with ideas and the desire to bring in local politicians to make this a fantastic region to live in, to work in, to do fantastic things in,” she said.
“If you think about the example of the AstraZeneca vaccine, there are so many things that we can do together in exactly the same way.
“But we need the convening power. We need to get people together and we need people to agree to focus on some really major things that we’re going to do together for the benefit of the region.”
At Pinsent Masons, Nicole Jadeja, life sciences partner, pointed to an evolution in how the sector approaches forging ties between companies and institutions. “We’re going to see unprecedented levels of collaboration, but the collaboration models are changing,” she said.
“We’re seeing different stakeholders partaking in the collaboration, people thinking about their competitors in a very different way. That’s in part because we’ve seen some of the legal relaxation around some of the competition laws coming out of Covid – people’s mindsets are changing in terms of how they look at their competitors… and there will be a lot more collaboration between life sciences and tech.”
Throughout the conference, relationships between private sector companies and universities were singled out as critical when it comes to talent. Tech firm Arm designs computer chips, licensing them to its partners. Almost 30bn chips were shipped worldwide last year with Arm tech at their heart.
Andrea Kells, director of research ecosystem at Arm, said: “Knowledge capital is something that really drives our business forwards, and we would actually say that that’s the most important aspect of our collaboration with universities… We collaborate with our commercial partners to talk about skills and talent and then try and transmit that to universities.”
Kells continued: “Our own investment in R&D depends on that talent pipeline. Because we are a global business, if we don’t get the talent through in the UK, we won’t make the R&D investments in the UK. We will do it in the US.
“So it’s predicated on having that supply of trained individuals coming through the door for us to then be able to make the investments in the research and development.”
As such, Bountra noted that universities across the UK have three primary “jobs”: train fresh talent; act as research powerhouses; and create benefits for wider society. He said: “People we train go all over the UK, but many of our alumni are literally dotted all over the world, and that’s great.
“We can use that network to influence the whole planet.”
Fit-for-purpose facilities
Finding the right real estate was another element highlighted as supporting the growth of the UK’s life sciences and technology industries. “It has to be fit for purpose,” said Richard O’Boyle, executive director at Pioneer Group, who sees the early stages of a shift in life sciences real estate from lab-enabled offices to office-enabled labs. The move comes as the industry starts to augment with tech, replacing some human work with robotics, and requiring less lab space as a result.
O’Boyle said: “Within biology, where you typically have a 50/50 split, maybe it will soon go to 70% being offices and 30% being labs. We’ll wait and see.”
Making labs more tech-enabled also means that skills change across the industry, as machine learning and smart technologies require new talent from graduates coming through the doors.
Arm’s Kells said: “We’re talking to universities all the time about changing courses, altering courses, making sure we have people coming through to industry with the skills that we need going forward.”
Bountra added: “If we have the right ideas and the right people, I think funding will come. That’s not the issue. I never worry about money. I always worry about people and ideas. We have more funding for innovation or venture creation per head than anywhere else in Europe.”
Experts from some of the largest investors in life sciences real estate spoke about demand for the asset class and whether it will be affected by some of the macroeconomic challenges now being seen in the markets.
Abigail Shapiro, senior vice-president for European office, retail and life sciences at Oxford Properties, said: “Maybe there’s going to be some short-term hit on the occupational demand similar to what we’ve seen during Covid. I think adding extra patience right now is not going to be a bad thing for most investors.”
Thomas Renn, vice-president of acquisitions and developments at Breakthrough Properties, believes that the period of uncertainty is going to persist for about nine months. He said: “The lack of liquidity options is going to create some caution in the companies in their expansion plans when they think about where they focus their energy and cash.”
Not surprisingly, investors are being more cautious, more selective and more balanced in their decisions on how to deploy capital this year. Michael Anstey, partner at Cambridge Innovation Capital, noted a slowdown in capital funding so far in 2022 from 2021. He said: “I think this may go on for longer than we may think.” But he added: “The good news is that this could be an opportunity to really make stock build out in that space.”
Best-laid plans
Underused retail space within town centres could be the next redevelopment opportunity to increase the amount of stock available for R&D. That means developers and investors have a chance to genuinely integrate science and tech into town centres.
Mike Derbyshire, head of planning at Bidwells, said: “Life sciences can bring some life back into the town centres. The value of the investment coming into the town centre is huge, and that means the benefits to local communities are huge.”
Another solution is speculative life sciences developments. Stuart Grant, chief executive at Advanced Research Clusters, said investors are now ready to take on the risk, pointing to his own company as an example. He said: “We put in place a business plan that involved speculative development on the back of strong occupier interest in the science, technology and innovation space. Our role as the real estate people is to create the right places for innovation. And clusters really drive that innovation.”
New commercial R&D facilities can also be created on the land owned by the universities. Legal & General has partnered with the University of Oxford to build out innovation districts, combining academic faculty space and commercial R&D space with associated amenity ancillary. The plans also include building new homes for graduates and for people who work at the university.
Anna Strongman, chief executive of Oxford University Development, said: “In doing that, we’re really focused on delivering exemplary development. We are very focused on sustainable performance and we’re very focused on meaningful partnerships.
“There’s a lot to do, but I think we should hold ourselves to very high ambitions and aspirations – because what we do will enable the science.”
To send feedback, e-mail evelina.grecenko@eg.co.uk or tweet @gre_eve
