Our partner and science guru Rob Burborough Burborough chaired an interesting panel discussion with Longfellow Real Estate Partners, LLC Real Estate Partners, LLC and others, which explored investing in successful life science ecosystems at the Bisnow Annual UK Life Sciences conference.

Rob narrows it down to seven key elements for the creation of a successful ecosystem.

• The first one is mature partnerships.

– This means having collaborations that work with the NHS and academia to reduce friction between the different organisations.

• Second is full integration.

— this is more than just collocation, this is giving each party to the agreement titles and roles within each other’s organisations.

• The third his mobility

– this is about mobility both in staff, sectors, industries, and academia. Giving people the opportunity to move across sectors across different skill sets freely it especially important. Allowing top talent to have multiple roles in academia, industry, JVs, and personal business projects is crucial to innovation creation.

• The fourth is flexibility

– this is flexibility in the real estate footprint, the ability to undertake a range of different scientific applications from med tech to wet and dry labs to bio- informatics and digital tech.

• The fifth is affordable housing

– this is housing for key workers for young talent. Most Nobel Prize winners and talented scientists do their best work between the ages of 25 and 40.

• The Sixth point is continued community engagement

– make the ecosystem valuable to the local economy to the local people and create an environment where you can grow and nurture talent.

• And finally, the seventh key element is talent and the most important

– create talent, grow talent, and invest in talent both in the UK and globally. Allow that talent to bring the best that they can bring to the environment. Allow them to think freely without unhindered by politics and bureaucratic red tape.