The Surrey Research Park: A Case Study of Strategic Planning for Economic Development - Technopolis: Best Practices for Science and Technology Cities - page 313

• Revising the received wisdom that the commercialisation of most R&D required
very sophisticated laboratories. Most of the companies that were interviewed
were looking for accommodation that would take technology beyond the
discovery phase towards the market and it was not straight laboratory space that
was required but rather a mixture of laboratories and office space for com-
mercial activities or pure office space.
• New markets were emerging through the de-regulation of such industrial sectors
as ICT and the financial sector; there was increasing regulation concerning the
environment, the automotive industry and the energy sector; and the change in
attitude by government to the release of intellectual property (IP) from its
defence laboratories and the management of IP in universities were producing a
raft of new technology enabled markets which were attractive to young tech-
nology entrepreneurs.

The study led to the conclusion that the facilities that should be built:

• Should be able to provide units for a number of sizes in order to allow com-
panies to move and match accommodation with need.
• The accommodation should be planned to enable its use as wet (chemistry/
biotech), dry (engineering laboratories) or for office accommodation.
• The nature of occupancy contracts should be able to offer for lengths which suit
high growth companies that need to be able to grow rapidly, or if they sell some
of their business, to reduce in size.
• The Park should not restrict tenants to technologies in which the University was
a leader because this would limit the capacity of entrepreneurs that were seeking
to merger new technologies to develop new markets; the decision was made to
make the park technologically promiscuous.

2.2 Physical Development and Master Plan

Part of the success for the Surrey Research Park derived from the interpretation
and translation of the conceptual objectives into a physical plan that would meet
the needs for a new type of small technology company that could be established
using the new business tools provided by access to lower cost computing.
The development objectives that were a response to the perceived market were
used to establish a Master Plan. This Plan, which still works well after 30 years of
developing the site, is based on creating three distinct zones on the park. These
were planned to accommodate:
Small units for small start up companies or specialist parts of large companies;
this offers units ranging in size from 25 m 2 (250 ft 2 ) to 300 m 2 (3,000 ft 2 ).
Medium sized units: these are for companies with an annual turnover of
between £15 and £40 million or for national research facilities of multinational
companies.

Large buildings to accommodate headquarters for technology