Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
and focal point for this process helps to build local technology entrepreneurship
capacity.
The location of Park on the campus of the University of Surrey in Guildford,
which is part of an economic heartland region, has helped attract the right type of
tenants which are in high technology businesses with good quality of products and
services with strong opportunity for growth and development in global markets.
This is further supported by the marketing regime adopted by the Park in relation
to the promotion of the services it offers business, its location in terms of the
economy and the quality of international air communications which enable com-
panies to link with international markets, and the focus on technology companies
that are working on innovation.
Over time the success of the regime of supporting pre and full incubation and
grow-on space on the Park has supported a number of companies which have been
successful in developing technologies which have then been acquired by large
corporations. Examples include the acquisition of Bullfrog by Electronic Arts in
1994 and then the further acquisition of Criterion Software.
The Surrey region is overall an attractive location and appears to have a well
qualified workforce. The most recent available National Census data for 2001
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reveals Surrey's residents as highly qualified. In 2001, 27.2 % of 16-74 year olds
(209,100 people) had a degree or diploma (level 4/5) qualification, compared with
21.7 % in the South East and 19.9 % in England. The trend is also the same
younger age groups with 10.1 % of Surrey's over 16 year olds are qualified at
level 3 (2 or more A levels) compared with 8.3 % nationally and 21.6 % of
16-74 year olds in Surrey are qualified at level 2 (five or more GCSEs at grade A
to C) compared with the England average of 19.4 % qualified at this level.
The statistics also showed that there were 28,763 full time students (aged over
18) living in Surrey in 2001. Guildford had 7,004 students (9.6 % of its 16-74
population) and Runnymede had 5,731 students (11.8 %). 4.3 % of England's
16-74 year olds are students, compared with only 3.7 % in Surrey. This suggests
that many Surrey 18 year olds go to universities elsewhere in the UK.
To help European based industry maintain its competitive edge through fos-
tering innovation—success indicators:
The performance of companies on the Park is best demonstrated through case
studies of some of the high growth companies on the site.
The range of high growth companies that have developed on the site include
technology consultancies, companies that have licenced technology from gov-
ernment laboratories, companies that have developed their own intellectual
property, companies that have taken advantage of new technology platforms such
as low cost and high storage computing power as well as R&D teams working as
small specialist parts of large corporations which themselves have spun out
companies that have had an economic impact.
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