My Quest

Visiting innovation parks, collaboration hubs, science parks, technology clusters around the UK.

To learn and to share what the parks do and how they do it, get to know their tenants and see what exciting work they are doing for UK PLC.

What does it take to make innovation happen beyond taking large doses of Hopium?

Collaboration Nerve Centre

We can using the words innovation, collaboration, co-creation, hubs, clusters, and parks to describe a place but what needs to happen so it does not end up being a glorified building of rented desks?

Let’s take a road trip

Well, I’ve decided to use my Park Life concept, as a tenant on the Dorset Innovation Park, and take it on the road. Ultimately, I will share what I learn and feed back to the Park, the Defence BattleLab community and anyone else that cares to listen.

For clarity, I am not employed by the Dorset Innovation Park or the Defence BattleLab but I do see that an ecosystem that reaches far across the UK to the widest range of businesses, organisations, academia and subject matter experts is fundamental to what we need to do.

Shining a spotlight onto others will also reflect back onto us.

FAQs

Am I being paid to do this?

No. It is funded I guess by being a director of X-Net and it can afford me shooting off for days.

Why?

A lot is talked about innovation and collaboration, in terms of how it can make the UK economically stronger. I want to tap into the grass roots and see how people feel and what they are doing to make a difference. It’s important to celebrate everyone’s hard work.

What can we expect to see?

I want to record video interviews and write long blog pieces to share here and on LinkedIn after each visit.

What happens at the end?

I’m not very academic. I scraped through to get a pass degree in Mathematics in the 1980s, but then did a Masters Degree to make up somewhat. I would love to collate everything, write a study into that content, and share in a useful way.

Road trip with my Ioniq 5

This will also be a learning exercise in living with an electric car travelling around the UK and experiencing the quality of the infrastructure.

I’ve had an old Nissan Leaf with limited range, and a new standard range MG ZS, which felt never enough and took ages to charge. Now I have a brand new long range and ultra fast charging car.

Well, let’s see how that pans out. I’ve already suffered a dead 12v battery within the first week. Yikes. Never let it sit around with less than 20% for a few days, that’s the moral of that story and have a jump pack in the glove compartment