In Focus - Self-help manual
I’ve been reading Jenny Uglow’s terrific book The Lunar Men about The Lunar Society of Birmingham. For those who don’t know, this was a dinner club made up of prominent Midlands industrialists, scientists, natural philosophers, artists and intellectuals who met together regularly between 1765 and 1813.
Famously, the name of the society arose because the group would meet each month during the full moon when the extra light would make the journey home easier and safer.
Among those who regularly thrashed out ideas over the good food and fine wine were Matthew Boulton, Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles), Josiah Wedgwood and James Watt. Not a bad line-up for a round table, that.
The ingenuity of the Boultons and Watts of this world is deeply ingrained in the tale of Birmingham’s development, as is the phrase "the city of a thousand trades" and stories of the civic improvements overseen by mayor Joseph Chamberlain which left the city "parked, paved, assized, marketed, gas and watered and improved".
The essence of all this of course is the idea of self-help. Birmingham’s reputation has always been of a city that used its initiative, worked hard, sorted out its own problems and developed its own land.
Some of this thinking lingers on to this day. Birmingham City Council leader Mike Whitby’s plans for a Bank of Birmingham immediately spring to mind, while some of the comments made around local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) by local business leaders also have some of the "us alone" feel to them.
Such an approach will be put to the ultimate test in the coming months and years as there is likely to be precious little public sector cash around.
The twin-pronged approach of local innovation and finding local ways of funding it will be the story of the Midlands economy over the next few years. It will need business owners and funders to be imaginative in their thinking and bold in their risk taking.
Perhaps a suitable precedent, on the funding side, might be Michelin in North Staffordshire. The French tyre giant’s UK arm has a loan fund -Michelin Development - to help nascent SMEs build their businesses. Thus far it has loaned out more than £4m and created an estimated 1,800 jobs.
One if its loans was to Staffordshire-based Compact Science Systems - whose technical director Dennis Leigh developed part of the technology for the Beagle 2 Mars lander.
This coming together of funding and talent is what is needed to get the local economy moving and with the demise of the regional development agencies - although the funds they have sponsored continue - it is up to the likes of Michelin Development to help fill that funding gap.
In this regard it is good to see the private equity firms throwing themselves into the fray so enthusiastically. Bank funding is still patchy and, when most of the PE firms were sitting on their hands, the chances of getting development capital were slim for many companies.
Less so now, though. The Birmingham office of Catapult Venture Managers, for example, recently made its 14th transaction of 2010.
There are some fascinating companies in the Midlands to invest in. The Compact Science Systems of this world are the modern equivalents of the industrialists and scientist who attended the Lunar Society. With increased local funding in place to allow more of these sort of firms to develop, is it too fanciful to dream of a new golden age of innovation in Birmingham and beyond?
