The Future Towns Innovation Hub recently attended MIPIM, known this year as the Urban Festival. We went with a delegation from Business South (Business South | Championing the Central South Region), consisting of Businesses, Local Authorities, and the University, all under the remit of promoting our Central South region to the rest of the world, including developers and investors.
During this panel session, we talked about different understandings and goals of place-based innovation. We discussed what the challenges are in accelerating innovation in the Central South and described steps to take a collaborative approach to innovation forward to achieve impact. Lauren B. (Head of Social Value at Ridge and Partners LLP) identified the importance of embedding social value within a diverse range of communities and using frameworks and tools to evaluate success. Professor Clint Styles (MBA) (Associate Dean Enterprise of FEPS and Co-Director of the Hub) promoted the role of the University as understanding possible futures and FTIH as bringing expertise from a broad range of disciplines together to meet challenges brought by external organisations. Megan Carter (Regional Director at AtkinsRealis) highlighted that local authorities are rich in innovation and the importance of public and private sector collaboration. All agreed that more collaborative working is essential for accelerating place-based innovation towards happy, healthy and prosperous places and that hub is a fantastic place to put this into practice.
Watch this space!
