![]() ![]() "The plan is to grow the fund to £25m within the next three years and support more companies with groundbreaking ideas, as they locate at Discovery Park and add to our innovation cluster. To date we have invested in seven companies who are able to utilise this small seed funding to leverage greater investment. We wanted to go beyond the role of the traditional landlord and our CEO had the vision to create the Discovery Park Ventures fund. "We are valued partners of the companies we support, providing infrastructure, connections and services. This is a vision, said Jane, which is shared by The Midos Group which owns the Park. To bring together people who would never normally meet and spark those conversations to learn from each other." "I believe the role of the science park is to create serendipitous moments for those that work here. Jane has long been a believer in the value of networking and its ability to "spark" mutually beneficial relationships. ![]() It's clear that creating a community is core to Discovery Park's vision and its relentless networking events calendar is clear evidence of this. In building a strategy to create a biotech cluster, Discovery Park has refurbished 35,000 sq ft of high spec laboratory and writeup space, launched a start-up venture fund and is working with corporates already located on the park including Pfizer and global power technology company Cummins, the NHS and Universities based in Kent and beyond to develop a knowledge exchange community on site. There is so much innovation in scientific activity happening within Kent”. “Discovery Park already delivers a Gross Value Added (GVA ) to the local economy of £324 million, but we’re aiming to double that as we build our science and technology cluster. “Discovery Park marked its ten-year anniversary last year and we’ve really moved things up a gear,” says Jane Kennedy, who is very much at the vanguard of this push since arriving as Chief Business Officer two years ago. There’s a momentum building at Discovery Park in Kent, a 200-acre science park (of which 1.6 million square feet is built space) in Kent, as it seeks to establish itself as a life sciences hub that would expand the reach of the Golden Triangle down to the South East of England. Many young, growing life science businesses are struggling to secure the lab space to realise their ambitions, but the answer may be just a short train ride away. The shortage of lab space in Oxford, Cambridge and London has been well documented in the press. Jane Kennedy, Chief Business Officer, explains how the Kent science park could provide the answer to South East’s chronic shortage of lab space.
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