TZ WE OZ 3P

Technology for people- the Greater London

Council's innovation and employment strategy

David Elliott and Veronica Mole

Technology Policy Group, Faculty of Technology, The Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK

Between 1979 and 1983, in the Greater London area alone, unemployment figures nearly trebled. Concerned with stemming the tide of growing unemployment, the Greater London Council have adopted

an interventionist policy and are making attempts to regenerate the local economy.

Keywords: innovation, employment

In the last decade the regional policies of successive governments have centred around enterprise zones as the means of attracting industries to declining areas. Science parks and innovation centres attached to universities have been established in many areas and it is hoped that the fostering of academic and industrial links will lead to product innovations and new jobs. These attempts have been aimed mainly at the private sector. This paper looks at the industry and employment policy of the Greater London Council (GLC), using some examples of the projects and enterprises supported by the Greater London Enterprise Board to see if there is an argument for a public-sector-based strategy for technological innovation and job creation.

The development of new products is often seen as a way of ensuring business success in the private sector, and more generally of reenergising the economy, while the market mechanism is seen as the ultimate guide as to which innovations to follow up. But private profit is not the only possible guide. A novel approach to the management of innovation, and technological invest- ment, based on social-need criteria, is being promoted by, amongst others, the GLC, via its ambitious Technol- ogy Networks Programme.

L O C A L G O V E R N M E N T AND T E C H N O L O - G I C A L I N N O V A T I O N

Local Government agencies are becoming increasingly involved with technology--as a consequence of their planning responsibilities, and their regional development and employment policies. Several local authorities have attempted to strengthen the local economic base by supporting technological innovation e.g. through various types of commercially oriented 'high-technology' enter- prise units, science parks and innovation centres.

In contrast, several Labour-controlled metropolitan councils, e.g. London, Sheffield and West Midlands, have specifically attempted to preserve and create jobs by establishing innovation centres geared explicitly to meet- ing social needs.

The ideas that 'production for social need' can and should be differentiated from 'production for private profit' is of course central to socialist thinking. However it was given a somewhat more concrete form by the pioneering work of the Lucas Aerospace Combine Shop Stewards Committee, who, in 1976, produced an ambi- tious 'Alternative Corporate Plan' outlining some 150 socially needed products on which the Lucas Aerospace

Vol 6 No 1 January 1 9 8 5 0142-694x/85/010057-03 $03.00 © 1985 Butterworth & Co (Publishers) Ltd 57

workforce could be employed, as an alternative to redundancies ~. In order to promote this idea of 'socially useful product ion ' - - in the face of hostility from Lucas Aerospace--the Combine Committee established in 1977 the Centre for Alternative Industrial and Technological Systems (CAITS), initially at North East London Polytechnic. It has since moved to the Polytechnic of North London. The aim was to draw on the technical resources, ideas and expertise to be found within universities and polytechnics and in order to develop socially relevant product and production ideas.

In its 1981 Election Manifesto the Labour Group within the GLC referred specifically to the Lucas workers campaign. When Labour came to power it established in 1982, a Greater London Enterprise Board (GLEB) as an independent company to act as a public investment agency, operating within guidelines set by the GLC 2. One of GLEB's first initiatives was to establish a series of 'Technology Networks' based on London's polytechnics, on very much the same lines as CAITS, with the aim of stimulating and supporting job-creating technological innovations 3.

THE GLEB TECHNOLOGY NETWORKS

Two of the networks established in 1983 are technology- based: The London Energy and Employment Network (LEEN) and the London New Technology Network. Two others are area-based: the South East Network (Thames Technet) and the North and East Network (Product Development Network for North and East London). There are plans for a West London Network and a Transport Network.

Each is associated with local polytechnics or colleges: for example, LEEN, the energy network, has a centre in Southwark, linked to the South Bank Polytechnic and a centre in Camden linked to the Polytechnic of Central London; Thames Technet is linked to Thames Polytechnic and the North and East Network to the Polytechnic of North London.

However, the links are not just with polytechnics. Each network has its own small independent liaison staff, housed in separate buildings with their own workshops, the idea being that would-be users (inventors, co- operatives, workers from firms threatened with closure, community and tenant groups) could have direct access to facilities and advice in order to develop ideas, plans and, if necessary, new products, drawing on the re- sources of the workshop and its associated polytechnic.

THE GLEB 'ENTERPRISE PLAN' CONCEPT

The GLEB's main aim is to create employment in London by investing public funds (from the rates) in selected areas and industrial sectors. In some cases it has helped new private or co-operative enterprises to set up. In others it has 'bailed out' firms that would otherwise have collapsed. However it is not content with simply

rescuing 'lame ducks'. In each case the GLEB has attempted to help the firms concerned to produce an 'enterprise plan' outlining new products and/or new markets which the firm could develop in order to achieve viability.

But these 'enterprise plans' are not solely concerned with economic viability. Before receiving any funding the firms must also demonstrate that they will abide by a set of social and environmental criteria detailed below~:

• Among the social costs to be taken into account: o the opportunity cost of labour, both skilled and

unskilled o the opportunity cost of land and buildings o the opportunity cost of the plant and equipment to

be used o the extent to which the project involved costs

which were not born by the project (such as pollution or noise)

• Among the social benefits would be: o the extent to which the project met needs of poorer

areas and disadvantaged groups in the London economy (achieved by attaching weights to the money revenues generated by the project)

o the London income multiplier effect (the extent to which the project generated incomes which were converted into effective demand tor London pro- duced goods and services)

o the extent to which the project developed skills in the workforce of London

o the net contribution to employment in London (involving an assessment of job loss in competitive enterprises as well as job creation)

o the effects of increasing competition in a monopoly sector

o the willingness of the owner/managers of the project to enter into planning agreements with the unions on, for example, conditions of work, labour organisation, reinvestment in the London economy and methods of introducing new technology

o the extent to which the project involves new forms of social ownership designed to give working people a greater control over their production and circulation process (for example through municipal enterprise and worker co-ops)

o the extent to which the project can be made part of a planned set of trade relations with other local authorities in the UK, and Europe, or with the third world, in a way which will be of a longterm benefit to the people of London

o the contribution of the project to improving the conditions of women, and of domestic producers

These criteria reflect policy decisions taken by the GLC, the GLEB being instructed for example to liaise closely with trade unions, and voluntary and community groups and to take particular account of the needs of women and ethnic groups.

*Source: 'Enterprise Planning', GLEB (1983).

58 DESIGN STUDIES

In addition, several specific existing industrial sectors were singled out for special attention (e.g. the furniture trade and the clothing industry) as being particularly important for London. But equally, attention has been focused on potentially important new areas, such as energy conservation.

An attempt has been made to make decision-making systems as open and participatory as possible--e.g, by identifying and reacting to needs expressed by commun- ity representatives. For example, the GLC's Popular Planning Unit, which is working closely with local community groups, convenes regular Popular Planning Forums with the aim of stimulating the development of 'local plans' and proposals, which in turn are fed into the GLC planning process.

The fmal assessment is of course by the rate-payers, who by their votes at local elections can indicate whether or not they feel their money has been invested appropriately--hopefully not just in commercial terms, but more generally in terms of 'the benefit to London'. The rate-payer would thus in the end be acting, at the local elections, in regard to 'public enterprise', as the share-holders could at the AGM in relation to private enterprise.

What is the record so far? In its first year of operation the GLEB committed some £20M to 143 different projects, one quarter of them involving co-operatives. Just under 2000 jobs have thereby been preserved or created 4. With a cost per job of around £10 000 this is seen by the GLC as a significant achievement--especially given the short timescale. And in the next phase--with the Technology Networks coming fully on stream it is hoped that significantly more jobs will be created.

NEW PRODUCTS FOR OLD?

The Technology Network's r01e is to work with the various GLEB 'client' groups, feeding in ideas for new products and markets, thus helping them to develop viable enterprise plans and proposals. However, the aim is not to rely simply on 'technology push' or 'market pull'. The GLEB is essentially trying to develop a new approach to innovation in which 'consumer' and 'produc- er' groups act as 'product champions', responding not so much to technological possibilities (technology push) but rather to 'need pull', within a broad set of social criteria 5.

Thus the GLEB--and the GLC's Popular Planning Unit liaise closely with community organisations, tenants groups and trades councils, trying to help them develop their own ideas, proposals and plans based on their own perception of needs. The GLEB then tries to match these to production possibilities--with job crea- tion firmly in mind.

New products as such are not always required--often it is simply a matter of developing or deploying existing ideas or equipment (e.g. installing insulation). But the GLEB, via the Technology Networks, has established a 'product bank" of new ideas which can be drawn on--the ideas coming from the polytechnics, inventors, workers,

community groups and so on. Examples include the development of a novel entry-control phone system for high rise fiats; new heating and energy conservation equipment for housing estates plagued with high fuel bills and condensation; and heat recycling systems for private launderettes and community laundries'.

Essentially what is emerging--and it is early days yet--is a participatory mechanism for identifying needs and finding technologies to meet them; bringing, wher- ever possible, local skills and technical resources into play.

CONCLUSIONS

The GLEB can only hope to make a marginal impact on the problems faced by Londoners---given the structural causes of unemployment and the hostility of the Con- servative Government to 'interventionist' approaches. The GLEB has available to it only around £25M per year and, along with the GLC, is threatened with abolition before the next local elections.

Even if the GLC is abolished, the GLEB experiment will have bequeathed us not just with a few thousand jobs that might not have otherwise been created, plus a range of projects and products which might not otherwise have been developed, but also with the glimmering of a new approach to matching technical possibilities with social needs. Already this approach has been adopted by some other local councils. For example a West Midland Enterprise Board was set up in 1982 and has been supporting a technology centre based at Lanchester (Coventry) Polytechnic--the Unit for the Development of Alternative Products---along lines similar to the GLEB's Technology Networks. Similarly, Sheffield City Council has established SCEPTRE---the Sheffield Centre for Product Development and Technological Res- ources--based at Sheffield City Polytechnic.

These projects too are threatened by the Government's plans to abolish Metropolitan Councils (by 1986) and impose limits on the rate that can be levied by the other councils.

But the idea of 'production for need' seems unlikely to be so easily abolished.

REFERENCES

1 Wainwright, H and Elliott, D The Lucas Plan: a new trade unionism in the making Alison and Bushby, London (1982)

2 The guide-lines are spelt out in: Saving J o b s . . . shaping the future: an introduction to Enterprise Planning GLEB, London (1983)

3 Technology Networks: science and technology serving London's needs GLEB, London (1983)

4 Press release No 43 GLEB, London (March 1st, 1984) 5 For further discussion see: Elliott, D 'The GLC's innovation

and employment initatives' TPG 07, Technology Policy Group, The Open University, Milton Keynes (1984)

*Fuller details on projects are available direct from the respective Technology Network, which can be contacted via the GLEB, 63-67 Newington Causeway, London SE1.

Vol 6 No 1 January 1985 59