We can offer remote working through digital which means we’ve been able to work across the country.
We’ve delivered training programmes in Wales through video group clinics. We’re doing a lot of work in London and the Midlands is a new area that’s coming on.
People are not precious about where businesses are based anymore. It’s more around the offer that businesses can come forward with.
The challenge we have is around investment. There are things that we’re not able to do as quickly as we would like to, and investment has been that barrier.
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We get approached all the time from investors wanting to talk to us but we don’t want to hand over a large percentage of the company and for it to then operate very differently.
For us to grow, the questions are, ‘What does investment look like and is it right for us?’
SB: Having run a digital agency for 20 years, I’ve never known there to be more opportunity for digital in this area, and it’s the knock-on effect of the growth of digital both in the UK and Europe.
In the last year we’ve taken ten calls from organisations in London and Europe looking to acquire or outsource.
And when it comes to staffing, we are getting applicants who’ve been through bootcamps. We’ve done a couple of hires from that and whereas I was complaining about the lack of talent five years ago, now I’m seeing it knocking on our office door.
We are based at the Strawberry Fields Digital Hub now. I couldn’t have imagined that would exist in Lancashire, but we get calls from people, applications, and they’ll say, ‘I drive past, and I look at it and I think I want to work there’.
We’ve taken advice on becoming investor ready and I know others who have as well, and we’ve not got it from Lancashire. There is definitely a gap there. That’s a big missing jigsaw piece.
EA: In the grand scheme of things we are a relatively small business and we’re in a very competitive space. There’s a lot of big players internationally.
There’s only ten of us in the business at the moment, but we’ve got plans in place this year to increase that by another 25 to 30 roles.
Our head office is in London. Our current development team are in London, but we’re putting the majority of the growth up here in Lancashire. This is the intention.
This is why we’ve come up here and one of the reasons for that is the M65 corridor. It makes a lot of sense.
We’ve positioned ourselves on Shuttleworth Mead Business Park just outside Burnley. I’ve got team members coming in from Chorley, from Lostock Hall and Preston. I’m in the Ribble Valley.
We are quite blessed here as well. We’ve got really good connectivity. Interestingly, one of the challenges that I’m foreseeing moving forwards is the availability of space to accommodate growth.
We’ve come here to take advantage of the skills that are available around us, to create good, well-paid, quality jobs.
Sometimes we get
too caught up trying to define what we’re going to be known for,
rather than just saying, ‘look, let’s be the most investable place anywhere in the UK’
VK: The government has sent some strong messages to the market about Levelling Up. From June last year, ten per cent of the scoring for any government contract became attributable to social value, whether it’s post-Covid economic recovery, Levelling Up, equality or diversity and inclusion. There’s a real opportunity for Lancashire to capitalise on this as it has a huge amount to offer in terms of skills and a diverse talent pool.
As an industry, across cyber and digital, we need to invest time improving inclusive behaviours at work to attract the best and brightest candidates.
MW: It’s really important to get a clustering effect, because knowledge intensive businesses want to share ideas, they want to bounce ideas off each other, and if you think about places like Daresbury in Cheshire, they’ve got that critical mass.
They’ve got a lot of tech businesses all sharing ideas, tapping into Innovate UK monies, and learning from each other about how to do it.
We need to create something similar and it overlaps with the discussion about investment readiness, because without that critical mass it’s difficult to get finance houses to understand the degree of deal flow that might be available and to have the right mix of capital.
There is a debate about where’s the best place to create that critical mass, but we definitely need to do it. We need more Strawberry Fields but on an even bigger scale.
KH: Skills underpins a lot of this, knowing that you’ve got the workforce. The Innovation Centres, the Fraser Houses, the Landmarks, the Strawberry Fields of this world are doing a fantastic job of clustering people, leading to innovation.
If we can show how great we are, the external investment will come, but the skills underpin it.
MW: We’re making massive strides but it’s about being clever about joining up our different initiatives so that they really work for businesses.
EA: America’s approach to investment is entirely different to the UK approach. In the UK private investment is typically led by finance. It’s led by banks, by finance houses.
In the US it’s led by tech. It’s led by tech entrepreneurs. It’s led by people who’ve been there, done that, got the t-shirt, understand it and can see the value in it.
When we talk about education in investment, this is where we need it, because finance doesn’t necessarily understand digital. They don’t understand the tech sector.
KK: We are not good at blowing our own trumpet. We don’t shout about how great we are, some of the skills. We touched before on growth. One of the fundamental aspects of the strategy is not to copy other regions.
It’s to take our strengths, whether it’s cyber, advanced mobility, health, whether it’s green tech, we want to leapfrog other regions in those areas where we’re particularly strong and that’s how we’re going to get that growth, not by copying somebody else.
We’re on a journey and this isn’t a journey that’s going to end in a year or two, this is a long road.
Because of that it’s essential that we focus on the schools as much as the other parts of the economy.
We need to inspire kids at an early age to consider a career in a digital discipline, whatever that means in ten, 20, 30 years’ time, and that will see us through for the next 50 years.
Lancashire
innovation
defining Working in partnership to drive economic growth //
LancashireLEP.co.uk LANCASHIREBUSINESSVIEW.CO.UK
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