I took a Local Enterprise Partnership Start-up from no strategy, business plan, permanent staff of budget to a fully staffed local development agency with £18m in grant funding and operational budget of £600k per annum
As I completed my 14-month role as Interim CEO of Greater Cambridge Greater Peterborough Enterprise Partnership, I left behind a permanent team of 5 staff, operational budget of £750k per annum, investment budget and plan for £7.5m, and a full economic strategy, business plan, and corporate structure that was ready to face whatever local partners and central government threw at it. When I joined, the organisation had no formal strategy, business plan, board approved operational budget, or permanent team. After 9 months in post, I’d pretty much established the firm foundations for the future that the enterprise partnership needed.
Over a 3-month period from January 2013 I also led the partnership from a position of no interest or applications for Regional Growth Fund programme funding in the previous 3 years, to leading and submission of 2 programme bids worth £11m over 2 years – one of which (an enterprise growth and prototyping support programme for agriculture and food production) has been successfully offered £3.2m in grant funding. I also influenced the board and partners to allocate substantive funds to support international promotion and enterprise growth.
I put proper corporate management systems in place – including: more structured board meetings, agendas and papers; delivering a board-endorsed scheme of delegation; delivering management information including actual and forecast accounts; securing local matched funding for central government core funding; and putting in place legal contracts and documentation for procurement and HR.
Overall – in my tenure as the interim CEO, I had steered the local enterprise partnership to being considered focused, driven and successful by local stakeholders and Whitehall departments.
High impact publications
I’m the author of a number of high impact, policy relevant reports about the economy – in particular, the report “Two Track Cities” published in 2007 was the Institute for Public Policy Research’s most popular report to date at the time (6,000 downloads in a three-month period) with a high level of press and media coverage. In this report, I highlighted the divergent economic performance of UK cities, and the fact that as well as some successful regeneration ad recovery in cities such as Sheffield and Manchester, there were a group of cities (such as Bradford, Middlesbrough and Hull) which had barely grown since the late 1980s, and experiencing continued chronic long term social and economic problems.
Leadership and research management
In 2006, I led, managed and contributed research to an evidence-based strategic review of London’s approach to entrepreneurship and promotion of business growth, including conducting international comparator research. This was the first time that a coherent and comprehensive assessment of London’s enterprise support needs was ever made.
Between 2006 and 2008, I was responsible for raising the reputation and achievements for economic research and policy at the UK think tank the Centre for Cities. I was successful in helping the Centre for Cities secure £70,000 from NESTA for undertaking the research and policy project ‘Innovation and the City’. I also led the concept design, planning and fundraising of £25,000 towards the annual flagship report ‘Cities Outlook’ in 2007 – which has subsequently become the annual flagship report of the Centre. As Head of Research there, I led the design of a research programme that raised £200,000 in external corporate donations.
In 2008, I took the challenge to create a regional intelligence think tank in the East of England. I transformed the East of England Observatory, a well-functioning virtual online library and information repository, into Insight East – a fully staffed intelligence and policy unit, that offered a research programme, advice and analysis to stakeholders and businesses in the region. I am particularly proud that we introduced three foresight policy debates to the region in 2010 and 2011, debating skills, the low carbon economy and post recession prospects.
Whilst at the East of England Development Agency, I also led the negotiations to get a real life practical tool from the £3.8 million EPSRC funded ReVISIONS research project. This project promises to get an integrated, multifunctional land use planning modelling tool into the public domain for use by regional stakeholders.
Working with experts
I’ve enjoyed engaging with various experts over the past few years. I’ve developed a number of programmes for knowledge exchange via collaborative research programmes and the commissioning of expert authors and papers. For example, at the Centre for Cities, I led the commissioning of two ‘City Expert’ papers on worklessness, and the role of housing in city economies. In my current role in the East of England, I commissioned a ‘Foresight Skills Programme’ which involved the recruitment of academic experts to author foresight papers and present and debate at a conference in September 2010.
Part of what I enjoy about my various roles and the area I work in is the opportunity to keep in touch with the latest developments in academic research. I have experience of academic teaching and research myself, and a continued active interest in academic research and affairs. I am networked with many of the leading the leading academic research centres and think tanks specialising in spatial economics and policy in the UK including Department of Urban Studies, University of Glasgow; CURDS, University of Newcastle; School of the Built Environment, Oxford Brookes University; Department of Geography and Geosciences, University of St. Andrews; Centre for International Competitiveness, University of Wales Institute, Cardiff; LSE Cities; Centre for Cities; and the Work Foundation. Personal links at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Geography, Department of Land Economy, and Institute for Manufacturing. I also have international networks and links with the Brookings Institute, the International Economic Development Council, EURADA, and the OECD.
Pioneering approaches to evidence based policy
In 2002-2005 I was privileged to work with a fantastic team at the newly created Futureskills Scotland – an applied labour market and skills research unit that was intended to directly inform and benefit all Scottish organisations involved in education, careers, skills and economic development.
In this role, I really learnt a significant amount about skills and the labour market, but also how to build evidence into the policy-making and decision-making process. I planned, researched and authored three of the most comprehensive reports and investigations of the Scottish Labour Market ever produced, including ‘The Scottish Labour Market’ (2003 and 2002 editions); ‘Labour Market Projections 2004’, and ‘Employability in Scotland’ (2004).
I also managed and edited the production of the most comprehensive benchmarking of Scotland’s labour market performance every published at the time in ‘International Comparisons of Labour Market and Skills Performance’ (2005).