Background & Context

 

Type of Project:

 

New build on a new site at the edge of Lancaster University campus. InfoLab21 is part of the Lancaster University campus, located approximately 3 miles south of the city centre of Lancaster. The University sought to bring together the disciplines of Communication Systems and Computing in one building and to create a new technology transfer department to work alongside them, the Knowledge Business Centre, in order to encourage the commercial exploitation of research.

 

Start and End Dates:

 

The building was initiated in 2003; completed in September 2004 and was officially opened, by Patricia Hewitt, then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, on 2nd February 2005.

 

Case Study tags: lancaster university, learning spaces, business start-up, north-west england, business and community engagement (bce), new build, higher education

 

'InfoLab21 is designed to have a substantial impact on the area, improving skills and creating a cluster of related technology businesses.'  Source: 02 February 2005. Patricia Hewitt to open Lancaster University's InfoLab21. North West Regional Development Agency  Press Release

 

The University sought to bring together the disciplines of Communication Systems and Computing in one building and to create a new technology transfer department to work alongside them, the Knowledge Business Centre, in order to encourage the commercial exploitation of research.

 

A further aim was to attract new high technology businesses to co-locate alongside the world-class academic team, for at the very heart of InfoLab21 is the notion that academics and businesspeople can and will work together for mutual benefit.

 

The architects (Falkner Browns) have designed a building that is both striking and functional.

 

The client's mission statement was to design: 'A Centre for excellence in ICT (Information Communications Technology) integrating computing Communications and ISS (Information Systems Services) to provide a world class focus for research, development and exploitation in the North West.' Faulkner Browns Architects.

 

There was a need for more integration between business and research and the building has enabled this to be achieved.

 

One of the rationales was the culture change for researchers so that they could think about the practical outcomes of what they do and how they can be realised into a business venture. Another aim was to connect with businesses across the North West, safeguarding sales and jobs and increasing sales and jobs through knowledge and technology transfer. The Knowledge Business Centre acts as a hub for ICT related business across the Northwest, connecting over 600 SMEs through the InfoLab21 Associate Company Scheme.

 

Enterprise feeds into the curriculum at Lancaster - skills development and expertise of academics are encouraged and students are placed in projects.

 

Case study tags: lancaster university, learning spaces, business start-up, north-west england, business and community engagement (bce)

 

What is it?

 

InfoLab21 is Lancaster University's world-class ICT Centre of Excellence. The enterprise aspects of InfoLab21 build on two decades of working with large companies in the sector - e.g. Cisco, BT, etc. InfoLab21 was built for the purpose of connecting research with local companies.

 

It is a well-equipped, high-tech environment providing ICT support for businesses, business incubation facilities, ICT education & training, research & development.

 

What happens in the space?

 

There are 2 wings to the building - the academic wing - which holds the newly merged (1st August 2010) School of Computing and Communications. This new school is a multimillion pound centre for study and research in the fields of computer science, ICT and communications engineering. Members of the school lead over £10 million worth of research funding and the HighWire Doctoral Training Centre (an Economic and ESRC project). HighWire, taking on 10 PhD postgraduate students each year, works with computing/management school/creative/contemporary arts.

Research focuses on Informatics, Cooperative & Interactive Systems, Software Engineering, Space Plasma Environment & Radio Science, Mobile & Ubiquitous Computing, Signal Processing Systems (SPS) Research, Networked & Distributed Systems.

 

An entire wing of InfoLab21 is dedicated to the Knowledge Business Centre (KBC), which houses the Business Development Team, business units and facilities for incubation and ICT Focus (the ICT Training Department).

 

The KBC was specifically developed to facilitate Knowledge Transfer and collaboration; primarily led by its Business Development Team who:

 

• Act as a link between businesses and InfoLab21 academics
• Facilitate joint research projects and ventures by identifying suitable partnerships, enabling businesses and academics to work side by side to develop new products and processes
• Support new opportunities for academic/business engagement and technology transfer
• Engage with and link regional ICT clusters
• Assist staff and student to create high-tech start-ups and spin-out companies

 

The support of small businesses is a particular objective of InfoLab21's Business Plan until 2015. The majority of funding for this initiative is from the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF), together with funding from the European Regional Development Fund.

 

Incubator space is promoted through all InfoLab21's marketing communications and online incubation directory sites like Incubation Northwest. The incubator space currently holds 12 companies of varying sizes. InfoLab21 has a close relationship with Lancaster City Council, who manage their own CityLab in Lancaster, which replicates the incubator space of InfoLab21. The council refer companies to InfoLab21 who would benefit from the working alongside researchers in InfoLab21.

 

The companies have to be in the digital industries to become residents at InfoLab21, but knowledge and technology transfer activities are open to digital and non-digital companies.

 

The space is involved in a lot of international market surveys - it taps into people with other languages so it is very good for students' (international) project activity. This international aspect provides a different, and positive, perspective on things. There are approximately 100 students involved in this international activity throughout a year.

The support for the incubator/spin-out businesses consists of a team of 7 with 2 account managers to facilitate links with other businesses/academics and manage joint bids, etc. The support team runs cluster groups with Business Link and provides secretariat support.

 

Once resident in InfoLab21, companies become Associate Companies and join a Northwest network of over 600 companies.

 

InfoLab21 provides a unique supportive environment for its residents. Important networks are built between clients. For example, Project Meeting Groups internally share best practice and a logo design was completed for one company by another. Some companies consist of one person and there may have been career changes later in life so it is very useful to have that network support.

 

InfoLab21 Business Service Portfolio

 

The InfoLab21 Strategic Innovation Support Programme (ISIS) provides Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the North West with free 'transformational ICT'. This involves ICT advice and implementation that changes the way a business operates, which means making changes to the organisation and business processes resulting in a major improvement that could not happen without the use of ICT. ISIS is the first project of its kind in the UK and is delivered under the Government's Solutions for Business portfolio. Support is part-financed by the European Regional Development Fund and delivered by the Graduate and Student Academies in the KBC. The graduates working in the Academy, which there are currently 12 are sponsored by 18 month internships working under the supervision of Technical Officers, in addition to providing a delivery capability, the diversity of work experience also considerably strengthens their CVs.

 

InfoLab21 Strategic Innovation Exploitation Programme (ISTEP)

ISTEP enables North West Digital and Creative businesses to collaborate with InfoLab21's 270+ strong research community to develop new high value products and processes. Support is fully funded and can include specialist consultancy, short-term projects, workshops and events. Past work includes developments in mobile applications, media streaming, wearable computing, wireless technology, speech analysis tools and data mining. Support is part-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and delivered under the 'Innovation, Advice and Guidance' product, part of the Government's Solutions for Business portfolio.

 

The InfoLab21 Student Academy aims to provide businesses with access to InfoLab21's extensive knowledge and skills base to develop their ICT capabilities and complete a project that they would not otherwise have had the resources to deliver. It also creates opportunities for InfoLab21's pool of full and part-time PhD students, Masters students and undergraduates to work with businesses and develop their work-based skills.

 

The Student Academy can arrange academic projects with undergraduates and postgraduates with a range of skills. It can also, where funding is available, employ a student to work on a short-term basis for a company as either a placement or a University-based project. Projects can vary in length from a few weeks to several months based on the need of the business and the student's availability.

 

The Academy can also provide support for Research & Development (R&D) activity and work that may be beyond the scope of the company, it can also be beneficial in that it encourages the building of relationships between businesses and students with the obvious bonus of potential employment on graduation.

 

In the first year of the MRes (Master of Research) there is an integral project with companies and the companies contribute to marks. The 2nd year of a PhD incorporates the 'Ideas Factory' where businesses work with the post-graduate students.

 

A sizeable proportion of the staff at InfoLab21 have a background in industry and there is much collaborative research work with industry. Lancaster University believes in the importance of being both research and business facing, and the need to prove impact. This results in a very dynamic environment.

 

Finance

 

Funding Sources

 

The Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) announced funding of £10 million in June 2003 to develop a world-class centre of excellence in Information and Communication Technology at Lancaster University.

 

The project was supported by an additional £2.5 million from Lancaster University and a further £2.1 million from the European Regional Development Fund.

 

Cost of project

 

£14.6 million- breakdown as above.

 

Technology

 

What technology is being used and how is it being used?

 

Offices are equipped with VOIP telephones according to requirements. Telephones allow direct-dialling to the offices and support Caller ID, call history, call divert, voicemail and group pick-up.

The whole building is wireless enabled. All staff have access to the educational network and there are a range of commercial options for residents depending on their needs.

As mentioned previously, The InfoLab21 Strategic Innovation Support Programme (ISIS) and the Strategic Innovation Exploitation Programme (ISTEP) both support enterprises by using ICT in different ways to engage and transform.

The expertise within the space focuses on the following key areas of ICT:

• Prototype Development
• Mobile & Wireless Technologies
• Software Development
• ICT Strategies, Audits & Infrastructure Development
• Research Into New Technologies
• e-Commerce
• Web Applications
• ICT Resources Optimisation through the Accelerator Programme

 

Transformational ICT - Definition

 

Transformational ICT is where ICT enables a completely different (i.e. transformed) business model which could simply not be delivered without that ICT and which potentially brings substantial new benefits to the business, for example, in terms of productivity, competitiveness, market access or carbon neutrality.

More examples:

• Reducing the paperwork burden
• Improve efficiency by reducing duplication
• Exploiting existing investments in ICT to help share existing capabilities more widely
• Streamlining processes
• The standardisation, simplification and sharing of information
• Opening up an increasing number of potential new channels for customer access using technology and delivering information in different ways, eg electronically and keep up with customer demand for information using new media
• Improving relationships with everyone involved in delivering service by allowing information to flow more freely and efficiently between partners, intermediaries and suppliers
• Providing information that can be used to make decisions, e.g. audit levels, security, staff usage
• Planning for the use of technology in business continuity, e.g. the use of shared facilities, flexible work options or remote access help reduce the impact of a disaster or emergency
• Using technology to develop new services, products and processes
• Using e-commerce solutions to support new ways of expanding customer markets and enable a business to increase market share
• Changing paper-based or offline business systems to web-based business systems

 

How does the technology add value?

 

Fast broadband and VOIP phones facilitate communications for resident companies.

InfoLab21 uses technology in a wide range of ways- within businesses to transform them as described above, but also to communicate about the research going on at the building and actively engage the wider community. For example, InfoLab21's marketing team disseminate research through InfoLab21's well established marketing communication channels, such as the InfoLab21 website, monthly E-newsletter InfoTextX which goes out to all InfoLab21 contacts- businesses, partners and funders, and social media like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

 

International Links

 

InfoLab21 has featured as an exemplar case study in the Knowledge Transfer issue of an international best practice publication, Mainstreaming Innovative Instruments for SME developments in Europe (Mini Europe).

"Mini Europe is about sharing and exchanging good practice between the region of 8 European Union Members States in the fields of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, with the aim of boosting their regional competitiveness." Steve Pleasant, Chief Executive.

 

As a Mini Europe Northwest England Stakeholder, InfoLab21 represents Britain as part of an international consortium of transnational partners. The consortium is led by the Province of Flevoland (Netherlands) and includes Észak-Alföld Regional Development Agency (Hungary), Maramure? (Romania), Almi Företagspartner Mitt AB (Sweden), Institute for SME Industrial Firms of the Valencian Govt. (Spain), Patras Science Park S.A (Greece), and Veneto Region and Veneto Innovazione (Italy).

 

Mini Europe is co-financed by ERDF through the INTERREG IVC programme.

 

InfoLab21 has been asked to join an international community of Higher Education Institutions called HEXTLEARN- 'Higher Education Exploring ICT Use For Lifelong Learning'.

 

InfoLab21 was approached and asked to demonstrate best practice on ICT for local and regional development because of the regional impact of its work with businesses through the InfoLab21 Strategic Innovation Support Programme (ISIS).

 

HEXTLEARN has over 500 members and is a network project co-funded by the Lifelong learning programme EACEA, Key Activity 3- ICT. HEXTLEARN aims to contribute to the deployment of Lifelong Learning strategies through ICT within Higher Education Institutions by means of peer reviews methodologies, offering a database of good practices and other useful materials, organising seminars and devoted events and promoting sharing and common understanding amongst the members.

 

Success Factors

 

What makes the space successful?

 

InfoLab21 is highly successful as it provides an ideal location, award winning facilities, access to support, an opportunity to be part of a unique international ICT Community and opportunities for ICT training onsite.

InfoLab21 is built on the southern edge of Lancaster University's parkland campus on the outskirts of Lancaster. The site offers excellent scenic views of the surrounding countryside an the roof terrace at InfoLab 21 is an excellent vantage point from which to see the beautiful surroundings with wild deer and other wildlife in close proximity. The terrace is regularly used to hold dinners and other events as it provides an excellent and flexible setting for both formal and informal situations. The café is 'real space' that's used by everyone - a space where 'unplanned things can happen'.

 

The space is built for purpose. It offers social space as well as more formal environments and is easily accessible throughout.

 

The campus is very well appointed for major transport links. InfoLab21 is in Lancashire, a county with a large and diverse economy consisting of a strong mix of over 35,000 registered companies representing all sectors of the UK economy.

 

InfoLab21 Events

 

There are circular rooms within the building that are bookable meeting rooms. They work well and have proved popular, for instance a student from Zurich held a tele/video conference with mentors in Switzerland and Lancaster.

InfoLab21 won the 2005 national British Council for Offices Best Corporate Workplace prize - the first time that a university building won the award.

Having spoken to people working within the building it is very apparent that people are proud of the building.

The KBC hosts and promotes a wide range of free events, exhibitions demonstrations, open days, conferences, workshops and seminars for a range of audiences, primarily businesses and schools. The events provide networking opportunities, updates on the latest developments in technology and routes to funding new technology products and processes.

 

What principles were behind the design?

 

The project was developed on the principles of the 'Rethinking construction' agenda (an initiative that emerged as a result of the Construction Task Force of 1998; the object of which was to improve the quality and efficiency of the service offered to clients in the construction industry). This meant that great store was set in achieving best value solutions in relation to cost, quality and programme considerations.

 

The procurement of the project was based on a Two stage Design and Construct, with the architect (FalknerBrowns) and the main contractor (HBG) pursuing an integrated team approach with an equitable management of risk.

The design of the building embraces a holistic approach to sustainable design, maximising natural light and ventilation to all workspaces.

 

What is innovative about the design? And use of the building?

 

The building is an exemplar of sustainable construction, with a Building Research Establishment BREEAM 'excellent' rated laboratory building, and one that embraces a holistic approach to sustainable design, maximising natural light and ventilation to all workspaces.

 

The first rate internal working environment and innovative planning strategies developed to support knowledge generation and team working, have led to InfoLab21 winning the 2005 national British Council for Offices Best Corporate Workplace prize.

 

This high quality working environment is essential to assist InfoLab21 in attracting the highest calibre staff and research projects. The building workspaces are clad in traditionally welted prepatinated copper with bronze windows and articulated acoustic trickle vents. Internally copper and bronze were used as high quality finishes in key areas.

 

The reception pod was constructed to Architect FalknerBrown's designs by Newcastle Joinery Interiors, with lacquered bright copper adhered under pressure to the curved joinery formwork.

 

Lessons Learned

 

What changes have you made as a result of receiving feedback?

 

Introduced new Italian purpose build incubation pods for one of the larger rooms to provide more flexible office sizes and made some modifications to office to suit particular needs of businesses.

 

InfoLab21 constantly evaluates 'how our residents are doing and whether there's any support we can provide them with or signpost them to. We build close relationships with our resident companies. As well as our incubation space manager, who facilitates the moving process and sorts any practical day to day issues out for the residents, each resident has a business development contact who visits each business regularly to gain feedback, determine their needs and facilitate technology transfer'.

 

Contact Details

 

Steve Riches, Director of InfoLab21 Knowledge Business Centre

 

Case study written March 2010.