Why Place Matters More Than Ever In An Age of Innovation

There’s a striking contradiction at the heart of the UK’s innovation economy.

Technology has made it easier than ever to work, collaborate and build businesses from almost anywhere. AI is accelerating that shift again. Yet some of the world’s most dynamic ‘frontier’ businesses and organisations seem increasingly determined to be close to one another.

We’re seeing that firsthand at our Regent’s Place campus – a bustling innovation cluster of respected research institutes, global companies and fast-growing start-ups.

In recent months, Anthropic has significantly expanded its presence at One Triton Square, alongside UK-founded AI and robotics company Humanoid became the latest arrival, taking 42,000 sq ft of lab space, and Neurocrine Biosciences.

What’s interesting isn’t simply the demand for high-quality office and lab space, but the desire to be part of something bigger: an innovation ecosystem where businesses, capital, research, talent and ideas can come together. It raises an important question for those of us who create and manage places: how can the physical environment help turn proximity into meaningful connection, and ultimately growth?

Increasingly, those intersections are being shaped according to geography. Regent’s Place is located at the heart of the Smart Mile, an innovation corridor that runs along London’s Euston Road spine from Paddington through to King’s Cross. It has Europe’s densest concentration of artificial intelligence, academic research, and venture capital: the Smart Mile is the commercial gateway where cutting-edge technology and scientific breakthroughs are transformed into billion-pound market realities. London’s connectivity to Oxford and Cambridge extends that ecosystem further, placing the capital at the heart of the Golden Triangle of science and technology innovation.

That concentration matters. But proximity alone doesn’t create an innovation ecosystem. What matters is what happens between the organisations within it.

Our partnership with the Francis Crick Institute is one example. The Crick at Regent's Place will provide lab space for life sciences, health and AI-enabled biotechnology businesses, with opportunities to connect into the expertise and scientific community of one of the world's leading biomedical research institutes. Venture Café London provides another kind of connection. Now established at Regent's Place for more than a year, it brings together hundreds of founders, researchers, investors, policymakers and technologists every Thursday to share ideas, demonstrate technologies and find potential collaborators.

Formal partnerships and organised events are only part of the picture. The shared spaces and everyday activity across the campus also create opportunities for informal encounters between people who might not otherwise meet.

These interactions matter because innovation rarely follows a predictable route. A conversation between a scientist and an entrepreneur can become a business. A researcher might see an application for an idea that someone from another discipline has missed. An introduction can lead to investment, new hires or a partnership.

A successful ecosystem also needs to give businesses room to grow. Our campus model is designed to offer space for every stage of the journey, from a single desk or bench through to a global headquarters. At Regent's Place, that means combining labs and flexible office set-ups with shared spaces for collaboration. Relation Therapeutics, for example, has expanded twice in our flexible lab spaces over the last three years, doubling its footprint to 13,000 sq ft as the company has grown its AI-led drug discovery partnerships. Anthropic's journey at the campus tells a similar story at a larger scale, following five previous deals with us as the company has rapidly grown its UK presence. For businesses like these, being able to scale in a single location, with a single landlord that understands their evolving needs, is a core part of the appeal.

Creating spaces that can foster meaningful relationships and interactions is an increasingly important part of what good placemaking means to us.

Building Foundations for Global Reputation

There is currently a big national conversation about how the UK converts its strengths in science, research and technology into successful businesses that start, scale and stay here.

The UK doesn't have a start-up problem. Ideas flow readily from our world-class universities and research institutions. The challenge is what happens next: helping those businesses scale, keeping them in the UK and enabling them to reach their full potential. Much of the focus rightly falls on investment, access to growth capital and the role of government in creating the right conditions. But place matters too.

Some of the most exciting advances today are emerging at the intersection of disciplines, and this is one of London's greatest advantages. The city doesn't just have a deep tech ecosystem; it has deep sector expertise across industries where the UK is already globally significant, from finance and professional services to life sciences and engineering. That combination means London is uniquely positioned to foster growth in both frontier and traditional industries, and crucially, to bring them together. It's why ecosystems matter: not just clusters of similar businesses, but environments where different kinds of expertise collide – from tech and finance to government and world class research. This concentration in one location just doesn’t exist anywhere else globally.

That requires us to think beyond the physical boundaries of any one campus, cluster or quarter. The world's most successful innovation clusters aren't defined by a single institution or neighbourhood. Their strength comes from bringing multiple anchors together across a connected geography.

We shouldn’t just be asking how the Smart Mile, or any other individual district, competes globally, but how they contribute to a London ‘frontier’ proposition with the scale and identity to stand alongside the world’s leading innovation centres.

And there is an opportunity to think beyond London too. Innovation clusters across the UK – from Oxford and Cambridge to Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds, Cardiff and Belfast – each bring different combinations of research, talent, businesses and expertise. With Euston’s links north, Paddington’s links to Oxford and King’s Cross’ links to Cambridge, and St Pancras' direct connection to Europe, London can act as a gateway between regional and international innovation and the wider world.