Hinterlands, peripheries, in-between places. Call them what you will, these are the locations where economic transformations happen.
Space, the vital ingredient
In the early 2000s, at the start of my career in inward investment promotion, I worked on a new technology park project in Yorkshire. The Advanced Manufacturing Park (AMP) was an inspired idea which has, over time, had a transformative effect on the region's manufacturing economy.
The basic idea was this: combine technologies and expertise from a leading engineering university with development land and a collaborative environment - to attract business investment with a high-productivity manufacturing proposition. Today the Park is home to large-scale inward investors including Rolls-Royce, McLaren and Boeing. It's also widely associated with the city of Sheffield - because of both its location and the University of Sheffield's pivotal role.
But here's a thing - the AMP is actually in Rotherham, just outside Sheffield's boundary. And it would have been impossible without the space for growth provided by the city's less well-known neighbouring town.
It happens all over the world
In the last few years I've looked at several international case studies of technology clusters, the Route 128 Corridor in Massachusetts - dubbed 'America's Technology Highway' - being just one example. There, electronics and computing spin-outs from MIT and Harvard were key drivers of growth, along with a range of hard-to-replicate factors relating to innovation, networks, venture capital, government coordination, and so on.
But the fact is that the cluster took its name from an expressway at the fringes of Boston - 13 miles and more from downtown - because those city peripheries offered something vital without which the cluster could never fulfil its potential - the connected, affordable space to achieve industrial scale and clustering critical mass.
World-leading cities need their hinterlands
I was reminded of all this when listening to speakers at the Oxford to Cambridge Region conference last November, one of whom stated clearly that achieving agglomeration effects (i.e. the productivity and other benefits of industry clustering) will require growth space beyond and inbetween the two famous university cities. The relative lack of industrial scale-up in the cities' hinterlands (compared with Route 128, for example) is, in fact, an important reason why this region's economy - in spite of world-leading technologies and expertise - needs to grow more to match its major global competitors.
Put another way, the key to Oxford and Cambridge achieving their full economic potential is to be found in a field in Bedfordshire.
Peripheries leading the way
The current, ongoing transformation of the UK's industrial economy, in areas including renewable energy, decarbonisation, the circular economy, and manufacturing and logistics supply chains, highlights the importance of peripheral locations in delivering growth and security. Just consider resurgent regions such as Teesside, the Humber, the Thames Estuary, and any one of the UK's other, primarily coastal, Freeport locations. These are places where ground-breaking technologies, often developed in big city universities, are actually being implemented at scale.
Positioning and promoting peripheral locations for inward investment attraction
So, the importance of peripheral locations is beyond doubt. And in terms of industrial economic development, there's no hierarchy of importance between high-profile cities and their hinterlands, even if a city's knowledge base is the initial magnet for inward investment attraction.
In which case, how can we best promote the hinterland offer to prospective inward investors?
Big university cities have something hinterland locations often can't compete with - profile and recognition (potentially combined with a distinctive knowledge proposition). This can be key to attracting inward investors, even if they end up building their facilities outside the city, perhaps in a neighbouring local authority area.
But remember we're talking about industrial investment here. 'Hinterland' features and benefits are way up their lists of requirements, including available, competitively priced land and fast transport connectivity. This might make the case for market positioning based on a 'city + region' proposition, the Oxford to Cambridge Region being a clear, effective example.
In other cases, the best approach may be to develop and promote a specifically hinterland identity. And it's worth remembering that these locations often benefit from high levels of recognition in their target sectors for investment attraction - think ports and process industries, the South Humber Bank for example.
Stories of regional transformation and opportunity
Sometimes these peripheral locations have seen industrial greatness followed by years of decline and knocked confidence (possibly prior to recent re-industrialisation and resurgence). Sometimes sector opportunities have changed radically - from fishing to offshore renewables, for example.
Either way, effective inward investment market positioning, or repositioning, is likely to be an essential part of the economic development mix. There are, after all, new stories to be told - about transformed economies and capabilities, value propositions and investment opportunities, not to mention renewed regional pride and confidence to be nurtured.
But as all of us know who have promoted these kinds of locations, they're at the cutting edge of economic growth and transformation, and all the efforts are worth it.
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