EEDA - East of England Development Agency

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Science parks

An enterprise science park is a business environment that supports incubator, start-up and spin-off companies, as well as small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Effectively forming an 'innovation cluster', these parks are located close to the region's major commercial corporations, to foster new levels of collaboration and co-operation.

EEDA is already in advanced discussions with BT at Adastral Park, Martlesham and Unilever at Colworth - where EEDA funding has already been agreed.

A key factor to the success of the science parks will be to foster an 'open innovation' culture.  This is recognised in the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) White Paper 'Innovation Nation' which says: “businesses are increasingly engaged in “open innovation” reaching outside their walls for ideas.” 

By promoting 'open innovation' as a key component of a science park, it will help establish the region as a leader in stimulating innovation through collaboration and knowledge transfer.  This has three key benefits:

• free access to some intellectual property (IP) 
• collaboration creating de facto standards
• extensive testing creating greater market flexibility.

These projects are aimed at enabling start-up companies to benefit from its corporate 'neighbour' through:

• obtaining IP - EEDA wants the main corporations to deploy a policy of open innovation
• obtaining business management support: innovation is primarily an exercise to turn good ideas into the commercial success, requiring good business processes, support from non-executives and potentially marketing and legal services
• obtaining finance support: corporations have their own investment vehicles, their involvement through non-executive positions and direct investments will attract other investments
• accessing distribution channels: corporations have an established product distribution network, something a small company can tap into, greatly reducing the risk to success
• sharing resources: corporations have very extensive facilities, ranging from conference rooms through to test equipment.

Through this engagement EEDA hopes to achieve greater success for SMEs and to anchor the major corporations to this region.

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