Summary

Knowledge intensive businesses and services are significant drivers of growth, and are increasingly urban. For many UK cities, their greatest concentration of knowledge and innovation is their universities, so national and local decision makers are increasingly looking to support collaborations between universities and high-growth firms.

The UK is improving with regards to these collaborations, and its cities are well placed to deliver further change. However, these policies have to be delivered locally. It’s at the city level that decision makers understand their growing businesses and their universities. And it is cities that can address and overcome the barriers to collaboration.

This ‘delivering change’ paper, supported by Santander, offers a series of case studies in the UK and abroad showing different ways universities, high-growth firms and cities collaborate. Some take advantage of history and brand such as Cambridge, while others build cross-border networks in order to build scale and make greater investments than they could on their own.