Innovation Districts Consulting combines unique physical spaces, valuable business services and curated communities. Together, these elements create attractive destinations that tenants and users will flock to—and ultimately pay a premium to be part of.
Cockerton + Co has helped to create leading Innovation Districts, like Level39 in London’s Canary Wharf. We can help transform your asset into a high-value innovation district which delivers a thriving community, business growth, and maximum asset value.
According to the Brookings Institute in the US, Innovation Districts are “geographic areas where leading-edge anchor institutions and companies cluster and connect with start-ups, business incubators and accelerators.”
They are also physically compact, transit-accessible, and technically-wired and offer mixed-use housing, office, and retail.” Interestingly, the term Innovation district is being used not solely to define suburban business parks, but also to describe centrally-located urban hubs of innovation activity.
What’s more, these centres aren’t just reserved for large cities like London. For smaller cities needing to attract investors, entrepreneurs and the business community—and venture into new industrial sectors—Innovation Districts are becoming the key economic development tool.
This trend towards specialised working hubs is a very exciting transformation for landowners and professionals working in real estate.
Real estate is becoming a commodity. This is because factors including the pandemic, remote working, and oversupply of office space are driving down demand and therefore prices for workspaces.
On the other hand, Innovation Districts deliver the promise of economic growth, technological advancement, job creation, skill development and business collaboration. As premium real estate assets, they’re in high demand among many stakeholders.
Government ministers, national and local, see Innovation Districts as places to deliver economic development, talent production and an industrial strategy.
Potential for real estate:
Developing Innovation Districts can improve your access to public assets and accelerate planning permissions.
Entrepreneurs and corporate innovators view these buildings as spaces worth paying for, as they deliver a wide variety of strategic benefits to the businesses they operate.
Potential for real estate:
Attract high-value tenants who are committed to the location for longer-term.
Local Communities view Innovation Districts as places for employment, social impact and sources of pride that underpin new local identities.
Potential for real estate:
Create a natural buzz, embrace and support locals, and manage the potentially negative connotations of gentrification.
Universities are establishing Innovation Districts to commercialise their intellectual property, support staff and student entrepreneurs, and create ecosystems which drive collaboration projects with industry.
Potential for real estate:
De-risk the investment by securing projects with University-owned assets and an established, active community.
Innovation Districts will look and operate differently depending on the city they are situated in, the customers and partners they need to serve, and the industry focus.
Cockerton + Co are experienced experts in the design and operations of many specialised Innovation Districts, from FinTech (Level39, Innovate Finance), to AI and Cyber Security (Plexal). Accordingly, we’ve witnessed first-hand the difference that it makes when Innovation Districts are tailored to their audience.
Successful Innovation Districts must incorporate:
- Work and innovation spaces (labs, prototyping spaces, collaboration spaces, design suites, etc.)
- Strategic partners from industry (trade bodies, community groups, research institutions like hospitals)
- Business services that enable cost-efficient growth
- Curated communities full of investors, talent, and customers.
Innovation Districts are becoming a strategic pillar for many institutions, driving growth, innovation and international relevance. However, they are more complex propositions to design, launch and manage, compared to traditional commercial real estate. This is why it is important to take an informed and considered approach when establishing one.
The upshot is that even institutions that excel at research and development need help with the transition to becoming an Innovation District. This is because Innovation Districts need to be more market-facing, entrepreneurial and integrated with industry. Cockerton + Co saw this first hand in a recent project with one of Canada’s leading academic institutions.
Cockerton + Co’s recent project for the University of Toronto, the Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus, is set to be a globally significant Life Sciences Centre. Cockerton + Co has been providing consulting services to deliver the activation strategy, business modelling and operations of the new cluster. The end goal is for the centre to create companies that radically advance world health care.
For this kind of Innovation District, the University of Toronto needed careful design and expert operations. It was vital to deliver the right services to student entrepreneurs, pharma companies, research hospitals, academic researchers, investors and supporting business professionals.
Innovation Districts are gaining popularity the world over. They are seen by cities to create a competitive advantage, draw in foreign direct investment, and enable businesses and talent to flourish. These advantages are critical to any city’s economic future.
In addition, Innovation Districts are where Covid vaccines are discovered, Cyber Security solutions proliferate, and where new products and services that change our lives emerge. As the world has seen from the pandemic, developing local capacity to solve global challenges is critically important to national security and wellness.
For commercial real estate owners, creating Innovation Districts is an incredibly powerful activation and place-making strategy. More importantly, they can drive diversified revenue streams into traditional business models and can assure asset appreciation over relatively short periods of time. Innovation Districts are high value, high-tech places which have an authentic identity, thereby differentiating them from generic workspaces and new developments.
Innovation Districts can also accelerate planning permissions (as they are key drivers in urban regeneration, jobs, and knowledge economy skills).
Cockerton + Co can help you design, build, and operate your Innovation District—whether you have a number of floors in a weathered building or a large complex of mixed-use buildings. We can transform disused and stale retail shopping centres, characterless business parks, Olympic parks, and urban real estate in need of a revitalisation strategy.
Innovation district consulting usually unfolds over the following process:
