Partner-up if you want to scale-up
Colin Sinclair, chief executive of Knowledge Quarter Liverpool
Scale-up businesses account for just 1% of UK SMEs but generate nearly 10% of SME employment and more than a fifth of SME turnover, amounting to around £500bn each year, according to analysis from the Social Market Foundation.
This is clearly a significant contribution, but there is real potential to make an even greater impact and for scale-ups to give the UK a competitive advantage for future generations, creating even more high-quality jobs, leading investment and innovation and driving forward our productivity. So how can we help to make that happen?
At the heart of the answer is a commitment to collaboration and having the right environment for growth. For innovation businesses, this means finding an innovation ecosystem where your plans can flourish and you can find like-minded peers to share and develop ideas.
An effective innovation ecosystem, like ours at Knowledge Quarter Liverpool (KQ Liverpool), can also help to mitigate some of the barriers to growth around issues such as funding, technology, access to talent and market insight.
Our network of partnerships with Liverpool John Moores University, University of Liverpool and Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, alongside other institutions, offers a wide range of opportunities for scale-up businesses. Here are some of the ways that KQ Liverpool’s innovation and growth services can support businesses to achieve greater scale.
Talent pipeline
Our innovation district is home to the original ‘Red Brick’, the University of Liverpool, and one of the UK’s top 10 young universities, Liverpool John Moores University, creating a collective of more than 70,000 students and an incredible pipeline of talent for businesses to access as they search for the right future skills for their growing teams.
Scale-ups can engage with universities and their students at an early stage, to influence their adoption of specific skills and instil a company culture that will aid a smooth transition into working life, as well as provide professional development training, again via universities.
At KQ Liverpool, we also work with local Sixth Form students through our Future Innovators Programme, helping to showcase the innovations and associated career opportunities available in their city. Recent examples of this include a cohort of students who visited the Swab and Send project at iiCON (Infection Innovation Consortium) in addition to the Manufacturing Technology Centre and Digital Innovation Facility.
Innovative thinking
Our anchor institutions are at the cutting-edge of research and development, with sites such as the £81m Materials Innovation Factory, Digital Innovation Facility and Snakebite Research Centre among the many groundbreaking facilities within KQ Liverpool.
Businesses looking to scale-up here can gain access to state-of-the-art technology, laboratory space and the very latest research, all on their doorstep. This can make a fundamental difference to the viability and ultimate success of their ventures, while helping to embed innovation and collaboration within their organisations.
Those technologies continue to evolve and receive investment, with iiCON’s £10m plans for high-containment Cat 3 Robotics Laboratories, supported by LCR Investment Zone funding, a clear example of what the future holds for KQ Liverpool.
An effective network
Of course, behind that research and technology are teams of experts, many of them world-leading in their respective fields. Their deep understanding of specific topics can benefit scale-ups in myriad ways, whether as a ‘critical friend’ for their ideas, an exemplar of best practice, or even a potential development and investment partner.
This can be even more powerful when experts come together, as we saw when LYVA Labs convened expert partners to deliver LCR’s first Microbials Accelerator programme on behalf of Innovate UK. Set across six months, 24 UK businesses benefited from the world-leading microbials academic expertise and commercialisation support to help drive their growth.
UoL is leading two projects which reflect the importance of collaboration. CHI-Zone will spearhead the use of AI and other data-driven tech to transform healthcare, social care and wellness, while the Microbiome and Infectious Disease (MaID Innovation Hub will provide scientific consultancy, access to cutting-edge technology, a strong partnership network and a rich range of guidance on issues such as funding, regulatory, IP and manufacturing.
Having that level of expert advice at your disposal, effectively an arms-length extension of your team, is a really efficient and cost-effective way for businesses to explore their future options and avoid what might otherwise be an unaffordable cost.
Financial and professional support
Our KQ Grow offers a bespoke business support programme to give businesses the support they need to grow and thrive here. The programme aims to fill any gaps SMEs may have in their knowledge or resource, with free guidance provided by expert partners. KQ Grow also enables scale-ups to become better connected to the business community across Liverpool and provides direct access to the City Region’s talent pipeline.
University partnerships can help to unlock new funding schemes to support R&D, innovation or growth, working alongside organisations such as UKRI.
Funding for LCR scale-ups can also be secured from sources such as LYVA Labs, which is based in a Sciontec AI space at The Spine and supports economic growth by commercialising innovation; inspiring ideas, creating partnerships and attracting investment.
‘This is the place’
Ambitious business owners can take a tangible sense of confidence and optimism from knowing their business is located in the right place, they are working with the right people and they are perfectly positioned for scale.
If you are looking to scale your business, collaboration and partnership should be top of your agenda, and KQ Liverpool may be just the place to begin.
