New technologies and different ways of working will change the business landscape more radically than at any time since the industrial revolution, according to research commissioned by HSBC, the banking group.
Its report, published on Friday, creates a map of the business hubs it expects to develop over the next 20 years. Instead of pictograms of factories and coal mines familiar to past generations of schoolchildren, the new map is dominated by symbols for wind farms, robotics, nanotechnology and stem-cell research.
It is likely to be welcomed by Lord Mandelson, business secretary, who hopes to drive the UK’s recovery from recession by developing new technologies and advanced manufacturing.
Many of the centres are outside London and the South East, underlining the potential that broadband connection creates for building businesses in outlying regions.
Although the Midlands and northern England are being hit hardest by the recession, the report argues that, in the longer term, mobile working could bridge the north-south divide.
Its predicted hotspots include Durham and Newcastle (nanotechnology), Manchester (stem cells and robotics), York (biotechnology) and Dundee (computer gaming, biotechnology and “nutraceuticals”, or foods with health benefits).
EXPERTISE IN THE NEWCASTLE PIPELINE
HSBC’s prediction that Newcastle will become a post-recession technology hotspot will come as no surprise to Nick Searby, writes
The company was spun off from Durham university in 2004 by Prof Ernie Appleton, who has since retired. It is now based at Gateshead, near Newcastle, where several pipeline companies are clustered around a General Electric technology centre. It employs nine people, most who were Durham students.
“There’s an awful lot of knowledge in Newcastle and the universities tap into that by providing specialised courses,” said Mr Searby, who joined 18 months ago from GE. “The cost of living is good compared to down south. It’s a really nice place to live. The airport’s good, so you can get out when you’ve had enough. All in all it’s a good place for graduates to start out.”
DPT hopes to break even by the end of this year and build annual turnover to £3m within two years. “The market size is tremendous,” said Mr Searby.
The report, by HSBC Commercial Banking and The Future Laboratory, a forecasting and strategy specialist, is based on interviews with 18 industry experts and a survey of 500 entrepreneurs and decision-makers in 17 UK cities.
Critics of futurology say it merely projects present trends into the future – and cannot predict unforeseen shifts – but the report is at least a guide to patterns emerging now.
“In the last decade, the notion of the ‘culture capital’ became a buzzword, as cities such as Cardiff, Newcastle, Gateshead, London and Liverpool worked with so-called ‘starchitects’ such as Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and Wilkinson Ayre to create business opportunities and global profiles,” Martin Raymond, the report’s author, said.
It selects five “supercities” that it thinks will derive prestige from new income streams or ways of working: Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool, Brighton and London.
Whatever it does for innovation, the report may offend lovers of the English language with its use of jargon such as “bleisure”, the deliberate and desirable blurring of business and pleasure, and “emo-nomics”, an economic system based on emotional responses.
It identifies types of emerging entrepreneur. Liam Walsh, a 19-year-old, Brighton-based street magician, video editor, promotions manager and website builder is an example of the “slash/slash careerist” – so called because of the way they describe their various jobs, such as video editor/producer/promotions manager.
Darika Ahrens, a 29-year-old freelance new media consultant from Borough in London, is seen as a “referral economist”, a new breed of business matchmaker who profits from connecting people.
Many entrepreneurs are described as “New Millennials”: born between 1985 and 1990, a generation immersed in technology, now penetrating new and old businesses.
