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How national bellwether can lead the way for UK growth

Business of Science brings together the voices of science, research, industry, policy and investment. Its 10th anniversary conference was hosted in Nottingham, where Professor Tom Rodden explored the university’s role in driving growth through innovation. 

I’ve been part of this region’s science community for a quarter of a century. I now chair the group that steers the East Midlands Combined County Authority’s vision for innovation and since 2023, I have led the º£½ÇºÚÁÏ’s research and innovation portfolio as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Exchange after serving as Chief Scientific Adviser for five years for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. 

I served as deputy executive chair of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, giving me further insights into how to drive our strategic funding and decision making for the greatest benefit to society, the economy and the planet. 

And as a computer scientist by discipline, focused on the intersection between humans and technology, I have a special interest in helping the UK get to grips with the challenges, opportunities and potential of AI.  

All this makes me well placed to speak about the power of this region, and the UK, to shape the way science responds to the great many challenges that face us over the coming decades.  

Our research portfolio draws £260m into this region every single year. Our research centres of excellence pull in far more by way of one-off capital investments into our research infrastructure.  

For example, we are expanding our world-leading Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre to house the UK’s most powerful ultra-high frequency MRI scanner. Only one other machine in the world can match its capacity, which is 1,000 times greater than Sir Peter’s invention. This £29m investment from the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, supported by £2m from the Wolfson Foundation, will create a national facility for UHF scanning that will reinforce the UK’s position as a world leader in biomedical imaging.

Classic tale of the unsung hero 

Nottingham is driving that growth, which puts the East Midlands at the heart of the UK’s life science economy. Our life science SME economy is second only to Cambridge. Our vehicle for entrepreneurs, Nottingham Technology Ventures, is home to the largest cluster of spin-out companies outside London.  

But we are the classic tale of the unsung hero. Our world-leading innovations attract significant backing from private and public investors, yet our region attracts far less R&D funding than the Golden Triangle and the Northern Powerhouse. Imagine what we could do with a little bit more help from our friends. 

Business of Science brings together the voices of science, research, industry, policy and investment, and on its 10th anniversary we hope to spark further conversations about the impact and potential of research-intensive universities like my own; well-funded science in the regions; and what it really takes to support people dedicated to turning ideas into innovations.  

All game-changing innovations start with an idea but few ideas – even the great ones – become game-changing innovations. The road to successful enterprise is rocky and strewn with potholes. How, then, do you scale up bold ideas into multi-million-pound enterprises and enable our innovators to transform many thousands of lives across the world?  

Innovation and expertise without access to infrastructure, funding, intellectual capital and know-how languishes. Scientists gravitate to Nottingham because we house and ensure access to some of the best facilities in the world, and world-leading expertise. 

This brings together a critical mass of people with the drive and ambition to make life better for people, communities and the planet. Our campuses, and this city, are big enough and small enough for like-minded people with closely correlated expertise to find each other and work on real solutions to real-world problems. 

That critical mass keeps us in the top 100 universities in the world, 7th in the UK for research power, and 2nd in the UK for the number of unique industry partners.

Fast-growing life science cluster 

We are now home to a portfolio of more than 40 spinouts, 25 of which launched in the last seven years. Our region has the second-highest concentration of small and medium-sized medtech companies in the UK, with around 400 companies based in and around Nottingham.  

This rich regional ecosystem has placed Nottingham at the heart of one of the fastest-growing life science clusters in the UK, with around 38,000 people employed across 14,000 life science and healthcare-related businesses.​  

Part of my role is to ensure the university acts as a catalyst to unlock knowledge by providing pillars of support for innovation under one roof. Our research excellence, commercialisation expertise, investor engagement, long-term business support and knowledge transfer partnerships are all closely connected. It’s all helped to drive a surge in UoN spinout formation over the last decade, raise more than £100 million in venture capital over the past five years, and secure over £28 million in KTP funding to support growth.

Get it right in Nottingham, so that we can get it right everywhere. That’s not just good for the UK economy, but the health and well-being of the world.

Responding to a shift in funding landscape

When you telescope out of a research-intensive institution like our own and survey the public funding landscape, you see a shift in how funding bodies view the role of science in our economy and society.  UKRI now considers itself an investor in world-leading innovation rather than a funder. There’s increased emphasis on innovation, commercialisation, and spinout capability, with £7bn directed toward supporting and scaling up innovative companies. At an institutional level, we have to respond to that shift: becoming more selective in what we put forward for funding, ensuring alignment with the big societal priorities, while remembering that 38% of government funding is invested in curiosity-driven research. Increasingly, public funding is tied to demonstrable pathways to impact, scale-up potential, and alignment with national growth missions.  

I hope I’m building up a picture of a region that exemplifies both the opportunities and challenges.

We have world-class expertise in the life sciences, engineering and sustainable chemistry. We have deep industrial heritage and significant growth potential.  

Innovation‑led growth remains at the heart of the UK’s economic agenda. The Industrial Strategy places universities as anchors for regional growth.

Yet the East Midlands has been under‑recognised and underfunded. The Midlands produces 14.5% of UK spinouts. These companies attract far less early investment than the Golden Triangle or Greater Manchester.

 United, we’re all powerful 

A united regional voice is all powerful to this investment piece. The combined authority for the East Midlands has started pulling many of the pieces of the regional picture together to transform the conversation.

As chair of the innovation advisory group to the East Midlands Combined County Authority, I am now seeing first-hand how we are working together to close the gap between startup and scale-up. As well as leveraging and directing funding into our high-growth areas, advanced manufacturing, creative and digital, health and MedTech, net zero and clean technologies, regional advocacy is integral to innovation-led growth.

Other regional innovation partnerships helping to close the gap are partnerships such as Midlands Innovation, through which we launched Midlands Mindforge, a £250m investment fund to accelerate the commercialisation of the transformational technologies being developed by our spin-outs and early-stage IP rich businesses. 

But we have a long way to go before the East Midlands catches up with progress in our fellow core cities like Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds. That matters, when the former Bank of England governor turns up in a region and describes it as the bellwether for the national economy.

Get it right in Nottingham, so that we can get it right everywhere. That’s not just good for the UK economy, but the health and well-being of the world.

Collaborators: a call to action

My university and our partnershave been driving growth through innovation for decades. The task now is scale.  That means supporting spinouts and SMEs to grow and stay in the region. It means investing in skills pipelines that align with high‑value sectors. It means ensuring funding mechanisms are flexible enough to reflect regional realities and respond to national priorities.   

I give our collaborators – current and future – a call to action:   

If you are a business leader looking to innovate, I encourage you to engage earlier and more deeply with our people – as a co‑creator. If you are an investor, look closely at the East Midlands and its tremendous potential. If you are a policymaker or public leader, I encourage you to continue backing place‑based innovation and to trust our region to build on our strengths.

Let’s work together to ensure that bold ideas generated by our scientists, engineers and innovators are translated into real-world technologies and products that change lives, strengthen economies and shape a better future.