Nick Clegg: TechNorth can put region on international map

In exclusive comments sent to CRN Nick Clegg says he hopes to put the North on the international map for technology and 'harness the success of Tech City'

When speaking to northern resellers, there is a clear feeling among some that the government needs to do more to help shine a light on the growth of the tech industry in the North and help present it as an international destination for overseas investors.

While for others, there is a feeling that the government needs to do more to help stimulate growth and try to rebalance the north-south divide that has been the stereotype for so long, both in the channel and the tech industry as a whole.

These are the two key aims of the TechNorth initiative, which Nick Clegg launched last month, in light of the success of Tech City. The project will have a budget of £2m per year which will be used to try to attract investors to the North, encourage businesses to share resources and help start-ups source funding capital.

To find out more about the initiative, CRN received exclusive email comments from the deputy prime minister on why he is launching the scheme and what he hopes to achieve.

Why have you created the TechNorth initiative now? If it is a reaction to the success of Tech City, then why was more northern investment not made before?

Nick Clegg: While some people are only just waking up to the idea of more power for the North and boosting its economy, this is something I've been talking about for years.

I hope the project will do what Tech City has done for East London: put the region on the international map. But I know better than many politicians that the North is a totally different beast – it needs its own identity and to do what it knows best.

So TechNorth will harness the success of the work in East London, but the whole point is that TechNorth is an idea for the North, from the North. It came from the community as part of my Northern Futures initiative. Launching the Northern Futures project in July, I asked people of the North for their ideas on how we build on strengths in the North to create an economic core in the heart of the region that can compete with the world's biggest cities. It's all about building a stronger economy and a fairer society.

How will TechNorth tackle the vast geographic gaps within the proposed cities and is it possible to make a cluster out of such a vast area?

Building on ideas I gathered from local people and businesses, TechNorth will co-ordinate the many pockets of excellence dotted around the region – including the existing digital technology expertise of Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool and Newcastle. But that doesn't exclude any of the areas where tech is taking off. The agency will help to attract investment to the North and support existing tech businesses to grow by pooling ideas and resources, across local boundaries. Together we can position the North as a place where the digital tech industry thrives on a global stage.

To attempt to create one vast cluster would miss the point – instead it is to help existing clusters across these cities grow and thrive together. This should enable businesses to share ideas and resources.

Is there a big enough local talent pool for TechNorth or do you hope to attract graduates from elsewhere to the target cities?

It's estimated that, collectively, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool and Newcastle have more than 20,000 businesses in the tech, media, and telecoms industries.

However, more than half of the technology graduates from Yorkshire and Humberside leave the North. That can't be right. My ambition, over time, is to double the number of tech jobs in the North. To put this in context, it is estimated there are about 200,000 ICT jobs in the region currently.

More opportunities for highly skilled tech jobs in the North should help create a virtuous circle of retaining more talent which then attracts more firms to the region and so on. By supporting the local business population and attracting inward investors, we hope to retain some of the highly skilled graduates coming out of our best universities.

Look out for the next issue of CRN which will feature an in-depth piece on the north-south divide in the channel and whether or not TechNorth can change it.