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A building can be impressive and still depend on a single customer.
In March 2023, I chaired South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority’s transport summit at the National College for High Speed Rail in Doncaster. The £26million college, backed by central government, the combined authority and the council, was built to train the engineers who would deliver HS2.
A few weeks later it announced it would close. Rail firms couldn’t commit to apprentices while HS2 kept changing shape, so the college never reached the student numbers it needed.
Finding capital for a new building is often the easy part. The college had public backers and met a clear need. Revenue is harder, and an asset that isn’t designed to earn its keep from a diversity of streams from the offset is exposed when the one source falters.
To avoid completely closing the building, Doncaster Council’s searched for a new use, and just over a year after the college shut down, Network Rail agreed a 25-year lease to run a training centre there. As a new wave of innovation investment arrives, designing for resilient revenue models belongs in the plan from day one.
Delivering an innovation nation
On 9th October, the Prime Minister set a goal of a globally significant cluster in every region and nation, under his mission of “good growth in every postcode”. He committed £1billion through UKRI for high-growth clusters, and said the longest-established mayoral authorities will, for the first time, get their own budget to help local innovations reach the market.
He pledged to steer more UK pension capital into British high-growth companies and promised to give technical education equal standing with academic routes, promoting apprenticeships and work placements, to provide “a path for everybody into the innovation economy”.
Capital will buy buildings and designations. Whether the growth sticks depends on what partners build around them. In the places that last, I often see four consistent factors.
1.   The story recruits allies beyond the usual suspects
A clear story attracts investors. But its bigger job is to bring in allies who might never normally sit on a partnership board.
Cambridge City Council’s early £1million commitment to Greater Cambridge Impact, a local social investment fund, helped unlock £6.25 million from Better Society Capital, the Cambridge Building Society, the combined authority, the Church of England, the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, a local tech investor and the Cambridge Pledge, through which entrepreneurs commit at least 5% of their future wealth.
At Westcott, the £20million Space Hub that opened in January was built by a rocket propulsion company, the park’s property fund owner, a drone firm, Buckinghamshire Council and the UK Space Agency.
Every extra ally brings money, assets or reach, and makes the partnership harder to knock over.
2.   Embracing consent rather than consensus
A bigger tent needs more sophisticated stewardship – and more negotiations. Co-authoring strategic plans with partners is widely recognised as good practice, and rightly so. With a wider pool of diverse partners the risk of this approach is inertia and frustration. A ‘consent over consensus’ approach protects the creativity and urgent optimism of enterprising partners, mobilising their energies in support of shared goals without seeking to agree every element collectively upfront.
3.   The district pays for its anchor
I recently spoke to a council building an innovation hub. It had funding for the anchor building and owned the whole site, with money to run the hub for a few years and a plan to sell the remaining plots. What would happen after those few years was unclear.
A more integrated model would treat the site as one system. The council keeps the land in ownership or co-ownership with patient investors. Income from the surrounding plots sustains the anchor, which delivers the skills and economic inclusion outcomes that mobilise philanthropic capital and social investors.
Two existing models suggest how far this could go. Key Fund has backed northern social enterprises with blended finance since 2002, pairing a grant that covers the cost of social impact with a loan that funds growth. Picture a cluster fund on the same lines, topped up by founders who grew there and pledge a share of their success, Cambridge Pledge-style, to back the next cohort. The cluster would gain a source of capital that grows as it succeeds.
4.   Someone holds the whole picture
Within a diversified and energetic place partnership, the value of appointing a full-time dedicated leader is clear.
The Sheffield Innovation Spine has demonstrated this value through the appointment of a dedicated project director in October 2024. Since then, the Spine has rapidly matured from a good idea to a tangible initiative which now anchors both Sheffield’s and the wider region’s investment prospectuses. Birmingham Knowledge Quarter has seen a similar acceleration since its partners appointed a dedicated steward to crystallise their shared ambition and mobilise the wider partnership behind it.
Lasting assets need partners with a stake
The innovation assets that deliver lasting value integrate impact into investment calculations, so it shapes what gets built and who helps fund it.
Last year I wrote about the need to adopt a mobilisation mindset – not just spending public funds better but catalysing the resources of the purposeful private sector. The Doncaster college had backers, but its future rested on one customer. If the innovation nation is to deliver good growth in every postcode, each new asset will need a coalition of partners with a stake in its success, so that no single decision in Whitehall can empty the building.
Where to start
The Innovation Ecosystem Accelerator is a UK Innovation Districts Group programme, designed and delivered by Recurve in partnership with Fern Consulting. From February to August 2027, teams of up to three people from each place partnership will learn the key skills needed to foster thriving innovation ecosystems. Applications for the first cohort are open now.
Alternatively, if you want help to integrate impact capital into your economic strategy, you can book a conversation with me about an impact capital strategy for your authority or region.
Sam Markey is Founder and Managing Director of Recurve and a Senior Associate at the Impact Investing Institute. Recurve is an Awards Partner at the iED Annual Awards 2026, sponsoring the Collaborative Initiative of the Year category.
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