Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
3.3 Management Team
The Research Park Management team is located on the Park. It comprises a core
management group that is responsible for the overall planning, development and
management of the site. The work streams of this group include: dealing with the
estate from the perspective of the initial development, finding occupiers and then
managing the estate. A second stream of work is concerned with providing the
business development service package and links with the University of Surrey's
Research and Enterprise Services.
In the UK there has been no formal government support for science and
technology parks. To provide the various support packages Park operators have
had to rely on building partnerships with those organisations that have from time to
time been in place to support general UK businesses. These include the now
defunct government funded Business Link programme as well as more specialist
government funded group such as the Surrey Enterprise Hub,
6
and the Innovation
and Growth team programme for the same area both of which programmes have
been cut because of a change in government policy related to providing govern-
ment support to business. The two latter programmes had their management teams
based on the Surrey Research Park and were respectively concerned with helping
high growth companies through a coaching and mentoring process and connecting
micro, small, medium, large and multinational companies in order to encourage
innovation in the region's business community. These programmes proved to be
highly effective and their closure was politically motivated following a change of
government in May 2010.
In 1997 the UK government formally extended the responsibilities of all
universities to extend beyond teaching and research to include business and
community development. Grant funding has been made available to all universities
to support this initiative. The University's Surrey Research Park Office in col-
laboration with the University's technology commercialisation office (Research
and Enterprise Services) have secured a government grant from the Higher
Education Innovation Fund to create a small pre-incubator, known as SET
Squared,
7
in the Park's existing Surrey Technology Centre. In 2011 the University
secured a further grant with which to develop a space technology incubator known
as the International Space Innovation Centre.
8
6
7
8
Search WWH ::
Custom Search