Richard Templer, Director of Innovation for the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, talks about the need to boost CleanTech innovation:
The 21st century is defined by two great challenges - climate change and limited natural resources. London is a leader in creating and developing businesses that address these challenges. In 2013, 9,000 London businesses, employing 163,000 people were selling £28 billion of climate change and resource efficient products and services. Sounds fantastic and it is, but we have a problem.
The scale of the challenge and business opportunity is so huge and so urgent that we need to double the growth rate in these businesses over the next decade. That means reaching 12% per annum growth rates before 2030.
Doubling growth
The Better Futures project has been designed to play an important role in making this possible. Its purpose is to help start-ups make the transition from a start-up venture to a business that has started to grow. Accelerating their growth is the key to doubling those growth rates.
The £1.6m project is a collaboration between the Greater London Authority, Imperial College London, Sustainable Bridges, The Old Oak Common and Park Royal Development Corporation and ICON, with funding from the European Regional Development Fund.
We provide access to shared workspace and tailored innovation support for CleanTech start-ups (shorthand for businesses that are addressing climate change and resource efficiency). The shared workspace brings together like-minded start-ups and enables us to provide on-the-spot support for business development. The innovation support includes tailored research and development opportunities and managed internships for the start-ups.
The partners running Better Futures were motivated by the observation that although CleanTech business was big, it was fragmented. Fragmentation hinders innovation and therefore growth. Our collaboration - creating partnership and knowledge sharing – is our proposed antidote to the problem.
The launch
This motivation behind the project set the scene for Better Futures’ launch in July 2017. We invited 100 people to discuss what could be done to accelerate and strengthen the growth of the CleanTech innovation community in London. The participants included start-ups, multinational businesses, national and local government, financiers and investors, media representatives and academic institutions. Given so many different perspectives it was surprising to hear so much unanimity over the big issues.
One of the key messages was that the CleanTech community needs Mayoral support and five months later we had a clear and positive response. Both the draft Environmental and Economic Development strategies for London proposed the creation of a CleanTech Innovation Cluster and outlined a strategic leadership from the Mayor’s office to “bring the sector together, understand its needs and support its growth”.
The future for CleanTech in London is set fair and Better Futures will play its part.