Integrating London's Innovation Ecosystem Through Cross-Sector Collaboration  

The NLA Expert Panel on  Innovation Districts spent the last year meeting to discuss ways of developing a comprehensive framework for fostering innovation-led growth across London and nationally, with the goal of informing and supporting both the Mayor's London Plan—guiding the physical evolution of the metropolitan area—and the London Growth Plan—supporting inclusive and sustainable economic growth through the innovation economy. 

The Expert Panel’s approach identified six critical areas that collectively define the future of innovation districts. This work recognized that innovation districts cannot be understood in silos—each sub-theme overlaps with and can enrich the work of other NLA Expert Panels in the hope of fostering cross-panel collaboration in the coming year.  We hope this results in a holistic approach to urban policy that prioritises integration, co-location, and densification. To approach this we divided our committee into six sub-groups, each of which overlap with the work of other Expert Panels at the NLA, and each of which examined: 1) Education + Healthcare; 2) Future of Workplace + Building Retrofit; 3) Transport, Infrastructure + Net-Zero; 4) Housing + Planning Policy; 5) Culture, High-Streets and Quality of Life; and 6) Industrial Space + Inclusive Economy. 

At the heart of the Committee's findings were six operational principles underpinning successful innovation districts: Integrate, Co-locate, Densify, Incentivise, Enliven, and Expand. These principles formed the conceptual backbone of recommendations spanning education, healthcare, workplace evolution, transport infrastructure, housing policy, cultural activation, and industrial space. Central to all discussions was: what constitutes an innovation worker in London, and how can planning and economic policy evolve to support an innovation economy?  

1. Education + Healthcare: Building National and Local Research Infrastructure 

The Education and Healthcare sub-group advocated for a tiered approach to innovation district development, recognizing that successful research ecosystems operated simultaneously at national, London-wide, and hyper-local levels. This work intersected with the NLA's Healthcare and Education Expert Panels while emphasizing the unique spatial and policy requirements of research-intensive environments. 

A central recommendation concerned redefining "key worker" status to include research and operations personnel who form the backbone of innovation districts. Currently, 33 boroughs maintain separate affordable workplace policies, creating fragmentation that inhibits mobility and clustering effects essential to innovation. The sub-group proposed early intervention mechanisms in the London Plan to differentiate and allocate resources between innovation districts and general employment clusters, ensuring research-intensive areas receive appropriate policy support. 

Tax policy emerged as a critical lever for growth, examining whether corporation tax incentives could encourage companies to relocate to designated innovation hubs, and whether international students—essential to research capacity—should be exempt from certain taxation. These fiscal considerations overlapped with the NLA's recent research on the potential of the built environment to contribute greatly to London’s growth. 

"Citizen science" represented an approach to community engagement, involving local residents of all generations in conservation and research efforts. This democratisation of scientific inquiry built social capital and created pathways for diverse talent to enter innovation sectors. However, commercialisation remained essential—financial stability and impact must coexist. The limiting factor identified was operational expertise: without skilled operations communities, even promising research cannot scale effectively.  

2. Future of Workplace + Building Retrofit: Reimagining Work Environments 

The Future of Workplace sub-group challenged conventional thinking about office space and business clustering. Their work intersects with the NLA's Work and Retrofit Expert Panels while focusing on how innovation-sector needs differed from traditional commercial real estate models. 

Co-location extended beyond business-to-business interaction to encompass workers' daily realities, including childcare flexibility and work-life integration. The "flight to quality" phenomenon—where employers competed to offer Grade-A environmental and social amenities—raised questions about affordability and accessibility. While large corporations gravitated toward premium spaces in primary locations, innovation has historically thrived in £30-£40 per square foot environments. The sub-group recommended exploring smaller co-working spaces in prime locations and championing retrofit of heritage buildings like Victoria House as affordable alternatives. 

The sub-group also emphasized that outer London boroughs should resist wholesale conversion of commercial space to housing. Instead, they advocated for manufacturing capacity to satisfy blue-collar jobs essential to a balanced economy. The stacked-industrial model and polycentric neighbourhood development emerged as key strategies. The group's central assertion: innovation requires making. The pairing of research and production—including SME making spaces and pilot production facilities bridging laboratory and market—represented essential infrastructure that must be protected and expanded.  

3. Transport + Infrastructure + Net-Zero: Connecting Innovation Ecosystems 

The Transport, Infrastructure, and Net-Zero sub-group recognized that connectivity formed the foundation of successful innovation districts. Innovation workers increasingly move between dispersed nodes—university laboratories, commercial offices, pilot production facilities, and healthcare research centers—throughout their careers and even within single workdays. Critical connectivity challenges included transport links within the Oxford-Cambridge Arc and potential Dublin connections for tax optimization. 

However, physical mobility represents only one dimension of connectivity. Innovation districts require robust infrastructure provision—particularly green power, high-capacity data networks, and reliable water supplies—to support energy-intensive research equipment, data centers, laboratory operations, and advanced manufacturing processes. Life sciences facilities and industrial making spaces consume significantly more resources per square meter than conventional office developments, creating infrastructure demands that must be anticipated at district scale. Renewable energy through district heating networks, on-site generation, and grid connections capable of handling variable loads can become essential infrastructure. 

Data infrastructure can enable the knowledge ecosystem. High-speed fiber networks, edge computing facilities, and 5G coverage allow researchers to share large datasets and support IoT applications in laboratory and production environments. Water provision—including specialized laboratory requirements, cooling systems, and sustainable drainage—must be integrated from inception. 

The net-zero agenda provides both constraint and opportunity. Electric vehicle charging, active transport prioritization, and enhanced public transport must be coupled with renewable energy provision and circular water systems to demonstrate that high-density, innovation-intensive development can achieve carbon neutrality. Innovation districts can become testbeds where sustainable urban development strategies are proven before broader replication.  

4. Housing + Planning Policy: Housing as Driver for Innovation 

The Housing and Planning Policy sub-group addressed how innovation district workers access housing across all tenures, densities, and sizes. This intersects with the NLA's Housing Expert Panel while focusing on creating residential environments that enable young people and workers in innovation and creative fields—including those with families—to live close to work and to each other. London's ability to attract and retain talent in research, technology, and creative sectors depend on providing diverse housing options accommodating different life stages, household compositions, and income levels. 

Beyond traditional key worker definitions, innovation thrives on serendipitous encounters across all walks of life. When researchers, makers, artists, technicians, and support workers live in proximity, informal knowledge exchange occurrs in cafes, parks, and shared spaces—catalysing breakthroughs that formal institutional settings alone cannot generate. This requires proactive planning policy encouraging mixed-use development and sufficient density to sustain retail, cultural, and social infrastructure that can enliven innovation districts. 

The Expert Panel took a long view on Section 106 contributions, recommending that key worker accommodation no longer be tied to specific employers—a model restricting labour mobility and career development. Successful precedents includ the London Cancer Hub, which integrates housing into development, and White City, adding 400 units for Imperial College key workers. These models demonstrate how innovation districts can internalize diverse housing provision while maintaining flexibility for worker movement across institutions and companies. The expansion of key worker definitions to include operations workers has implications for affordable housing allocation across London's 33 boroughs, but the broader imperative is to create complete, dense, mixed-tenure neighbourhoods supporting innovation through proximity and diversity.  

5. Culture, High-Streets and Urban Quality of Life: Science on Show 

The Culture and Urban Quality of Life sub-group advanced a singular principle: "Science on Show." This approach, overlapping with the NLA's High Streets and Culture Expert Panels, argued that innovation districts must actively engage the public through visible, accessible scientific activity. 

Successful precedents include CSM Granary Square, The Crick Institute, Imperial's Invention Rooms, and the Wellcome Centre's transparent laboratory design. These spaces demystify research and created social infrastructure that enliven innovation districts. Hackney Wick successfully subsidised food trucks until sufficient footfall was established—a model for public-sector intervention activating emerging innovation areas. 

Cultural offerings must be inclusive and affordable. High-quality food options at accessible price points should be considered as essential infrastructure, ensuring innovation districts serve diverse populations rather than becoming exclusive enclaves.  

6. Industrial Space + Inclusive Economy: Modernizing Production Infrastructure 

The Industrial Space and Inclusive Economy sub-group examined international precedents including Stevenage, Harlow, Paris Saclay, Philadelphia's University City, and Brooklyn Navy Yard, focusing on how production capacity supports innovation ecosystems. 

The Expert Panel advocated for high-density industrial space integrated within polycentric ecosystems inside the M25. Precedents like Tally Yard, Silvertown Refinery, Camden film studios, Docklands, and Olympia demonstrate that industrial space can be modernised and densified to coexist with residential and commercial uses. The challenge lay in educating borough planners about industrial space evolution—moving beyond outdated typologies to embrace contemporary production environments. 

The term "flexible" was poorly received by planners, suggesting more precise terminology is needed to describe adaptive industrial typologies. High-density cities like Hong Kong provide models for integrating production with residential uses, though cultural and regulatory differences required careful translation to the London context.  

Conclusion: An Integrated Vision for Innovation-Led Growth 

The NLA Innovation Districts Expert Panel’s work demonstrates that successful innovation districts require coordinated action across education, healthcare, workplace, transport, housing, culture, and industrial sectors. The six operational principles—Integrate, Co-locate, Densify, Incentivise, Enliven, and Expand—provide a framework for planning and investment decisions transcending traditional committee boundaries. By incentivising academic, commercial, and health co-location; providing high-specification technical and laboratory space while transforming existing buildings for these purposes; delivering sustainable transport and infrastructure connecting innovation spaces; providing housing for key workers; creating attractive public realm connecting innovation centers with communities; and creating modern industrial space enabling research, prototyping, and fabrication while creating pathways for diverse talent, London can continue as a global leader in innovation-led urban development that is both economically dynamic and socially inclusive.