The Oxford Trust at 40: How Innovation and Education Power Oxford's Future

[00:00:01] Susannah de Jager: Welcome to Oxford+. The podcast series for innovators and investors brought to you in partnership with Mishcon de Reya.

The Oxford Trust is an independent charitable organization established in 1985 by entrepreneurs Sir Martin and Lady Audrey Wood, co-founders of Oxford Instruments. Their mission was to encourage the pursuit of science in the Oxford region. Over the past 40 years, the Oxford Trust has played a pivotal role in supporting science and technology startups and promoting science education across the region.

It operates two innovation centers, the Oxford Center for Innovation in Central Oxford, and the Woods Center for Innovation in Headington. These centers provide workspace and support for science and tech entrepreneurs. In addition to fostering innovation, the Trust delivers education and engagement programs through its Science Oxford Initiative. Aiming to inspire young people about science and technology.

Today I'm joined by Steve Burgess, CEO, and Nicki Campling, Director of Innovation and Operations, to talk about the Trust in its 40th year and how it adapts and impacts the region's changing innovation ecosystem.

Steve, Nicki, thank you so much for joining me today.

You do so many things under the banner of the Oxford Trust, for those listening who maybe aren't so familiar with some of your work, can you give me a bit of background into the history of the trust?

[00:01:25] Steve Burgess: Yeah, so the Trust was formed 40 years ago. So in 1985 byAudrey and Martin Wood, who originally, founded Oxford Instruments, which was the University of Oxford's first spin out. Some say the first University spin out in the UK.

So they set the Trust up originally to support entrepreneurship, because when they were, setting up the Oxford Instruments over the previous 10 years there was no support in Oxford. The university did no entrepreneurial support. In fact, the conversion of ideas into product and the Uni was rather frowned upon as being not the thing to do when we should be doing just research. So they basically broke the mold in helping entrepreneurs, get their ideas and towards commercialization.The Oxford Trust was formed to help that. The first bit was to create a place where entrepreneurs could meet, and that was the STEP Centre in Osney Mead,on the grounds of Oxford Instruments first factory. Colloquially known as science slum, at that point, because it was just porter cabins. But technically it was the UK's first innovation center. It would certainly not be recognized as an innovation center now, but at that point it was quite unique.

[00:02:34] Susannah de Jager: I love that and I love that they were the first people to spin out and then that their instinct was so strong to recycle capital back into other people being able to do the same. Which we still need so much more of today, so that ethos remains. Nicki today, What are the core focuses for the trust? How have they evolved over time?

[00:02:56] Nicki Campling:

In terms of how we've grown, in terms of support, not just for innovation, we've also branched out into supporting STEM education in primary school children. At our Wood Center for Innovation, which is one of our two Oxford centers, we have the Science Oxford Center. Which supports the school curriculum in STEM and delivers programs to enhance, and spark children's passion, for STEM and hopefully their entrepreneurial spirit as well. So we have primary school children at the center, both indoor and outdoor science, so we're sat in 15 acres of woodland in Headington, so the children get a chance to be surrounded by all that science and nature, and learn from a very hands-on position.

[00:03:46] Susannah de Jager: In terms of the children and the STEM education, that's just one side of what you're doing and I really enjoy the idea of sparking it off them seeing entrepreneurs there. I can so envisage how that brings science alive for them.

But what are you doing in the core offering within those centers? What are you offering the companies that might come and found from your innovation centers?

[00:04:08] Nicki Campling: So we've got two slightly different offerings. So at our Wood Center for Innovation, we have class two laboratories and office spaces. Which we offer those startups that are still relatively early stage, but spin out of the incubators. So where they've first nurtured their ideas, worked towards their MVPs, and essentially are looking for their very first space as a business, and in our city center location, we house more tech-focused startups. So that's generally, office space, meeting room space, co-working space, supporting tech and deep tech in AI, in quantum, and various other diagnostic technologies.

[00:04:58] Susannah de Jager: Even within your own centers you have focus. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of clustering and how you see that benefiting people that come and found their businesses within your centers?

[00:05:12] Nicki Campling: I think clustering is essential. As a startup business founder, I think you can be in a really lonely place. Particularly when you first start out. It's essential that you have like-minded individuals around you that you can bounce your ideas from, that you can collaborate with. We've had many instances where companies have worked on projects together, and developed mutually beneficial R&D. Which is fantastic.I think community and a sense of community is also essential. They work incredibly hard, and for incredibly long hours, so our centers also provide that community aspect and we have an events itinerary which brings those communities together. At Headington, we operate within a cluster. So we work very closely with the Bio Escalator, with the Hill, and with Oxford Brooks Bio Innovation Hub, and we like to build those relationships with those startups. so that we can hopefully continue to nurture those within our centers.

[00:06:14] Susannah de Jager: And I've been at some of your events and they are really, really fun and interesting, so I can vouch for how effective that is.

Steve, in terms of how you measure impact and plan for how you're going to evolve the Trust, how do you do that? That would seem quite a difficult task.

[00:06:31] Steve Burgess: It's a very difficult task. it is probably slightly easier in the innovation space. So things that we measure is the survivability of companies. So when they leave, where are they in five years time? Sometimes it's difficult to track that or, frankly, you forget to track that. But,looking at that, and we are about a 95% success rate over this last 20 years that we have information on. So the companies are still in existence. Now that may well be that they've been acquired or they've acquired, or the companies changed their identity.

But the core offer has remained intact, and that's probably higher than most centers that are community agnostic. So looking at it, more of a property development angle. As a charity, we are able to take a more pragmatic view of gateway policies so that we can try and create that community that Nicki was saying with like-minded companies. Not all in one monoculture, because we don't necessarily agree that all biotech companies have to sit in our biotech center.

So on the impact on the innovation, we do look at things like GVA. It's not a hundred percent correct but basically we use the same metrics that everybody else does. You've got a certain number of employees on that site, average salary, what does that GVA look like? But it's a metric that people understand.

So we try to do those ones, even though we are not particularly wedded to it as a strategy. It's not our strategy to build GVA. Our strategy is to encourage that pursuit of science and make sure that the companies are successful in their next stage when they leave, and they will leave.

They may not want to leave sometimes, but they do have to leave when they get to a certain size.

[00:08:09] Susannah de Jager: What size.

[00:08:11] Steve Burgess: Normally we say up to 20% of the floor space of any one of our centers. That's about the maximum that we would have. There are occasional exceptions of when we're clear on the business plan of where people are going.

But normally it's 20%, and around about 40 staff.

So we do watch employee numbers as they grow, so they're not basically shoehorning everybody in.

[00:08:32] Susannah de Jager: That is so interesting because in an interview with Professor Robin Dunbar. We've been speaking about how 40 is the size at which companies have to materially change their infrastructure, their structure, their organization, and how they communicate internally. So it's interesting that that's a pivot point for when people osmos out of the Innovation Centers.

[00:08:52] Steve Burgess: Yes, and it's a cruel world out there when you actually leave the, I guess the supportive environment of Innovation Centers like ours. There are other Innovation Centers, we're not alone. But, people are quite surprised when they have to set up their own activities in there without people who are providing infrastructure and IT and all of the other things, and they've got to do it themselves.

[00:09:11] Susannah de Jager: 95% sounds really very high, so I would agree with you there. I think that's really successful. Nicki, how have you seen the landscape evolve in your time and over the last sort of 10, 15 years? You guys have to develop in response to that and what changes do you see coming down the track at you as well?

[00:09:30] Nicki Campling: I think fundamentally the biggest driver of evolution across the ecosystem is investment. Cash is king and a startup company cannot thrive, and cannot grow, and succeed, without investment of some kind. The landscape over the last few years has dramatically changed, for a multitude of reasons.

Some of which is very much around local economy. Some of it is around local infrastructure. Some of it is global economics, and we all know about those. So I won't go into detail on that. The beauty of our organisation is that we are agile and we can be super flexible, and indeed, actually the Wood Center for Innovation was originally designed as office spaces because that was very much the landscape at the time and very much the demand in the market then COVID hit, and the whole world went a bit crazy. Everybody's working patterns changed, and the demand at the time, particularly across Oxfordshire, was very much around lab spaces. So the trust took the decision to pivot, and actually retrofit the whole of the ground floor of our innovation center, in Headington, to class two lab spaces.

[00:10:50] Susannah de Jager: Who knows the financial impact and what detriment that would've been, to the Oxford Trust, had that pivot not been taken at that time. So, the pace at which it changes feels like it's sped up. It feels like strategically you really need to be on the front foot and you really need to be on the ground in terms of eyes and ears and connectivity and linking with all sorts of networks and organizations. Including commercial agents and all the reports that are released around market conditions and what that looks like, and I guess because we are a charity and because we are relatively small, in the grand scheme of things. That means that we can change and we can change pretty quickly. And it's really interesting to hear you draw out the specific fact of your structure and being a charity and not therefore, primarily, albeit that you have commercial activities, but motivated just by that you are looking to serve the ecosystem and that, I assume, would allow you to make those decisions quicker cause you're not having to make them on two basis. It's interesting that you say other Innovation Centers earlier, Steve, the outcomes aren't necessarily as important to them because if I were a tenant looking to select, that would be very important to me, and so these things that are driven from your ethos, starting from a different place, they feel very important to the outcomes you are pursuing.

[00:12:17] Steve Burgess: And I think the fact that, you're talking about recycling capital, and we recycle our internal capital, so the surplus that we do get from the Innovation Centers into STEM education. So it's not into shareholder funds or for any other purposes. It is really still to continue that pursuit of science, at the primary school level, into secondary school, into careers. and then hopefully some of them will come back and be entrepreneurs, and we have one company in the Wood Center that did exactly that.

So the founder of that got his inspiration for starting a science entrepreneurship career at one of the Trusts early events and programs, and then went to Oxford University, created the technology, and now is in the Center. So that is a nice virtuous circle, and that would be the perfect solution.

[00:13:03] Susannah de Jager: Such a wonderful validation of the model.

Looking at the investing side, and you touched upon it there, Sir Martin and Lady Audrey were the original Oxford power couple. Which you said the other day, which made me smile. They're hugely successful. Obviously, as you touched upon, founded Oxford Instruments, one of the first university Spin outs and then so importantly, they did recycle the money back into Oxford, both philanthropically and as investors. Why don't you think we see more of this, and in your opinion, how could we encourage more of it?

[00:13:36] Steve Burgess: Yeah, it's a good question really that and I'm not sure there's gonna be one simple answer or solution to that.

[00:13:41] Susannah de Jager: How very disappointing Steve.

[00:13:43] Steve Burgess: I know, I know. We like to give those hallelujah moments, but that might notcome. Oxford seems to be a little different than quite a number of other places. There isn't a history of, or not an obvious history of philanthropy outside of funding the universities. So there's a lot of money gets recycled from entrepreneurship back into the university, into colleges, faculties, named buildings. But not so much into the wider, system of, if you like, more neutral zonesand Audrey and Martin, sure they funded the Martin Wood Theater at the university. But also has spent a tremendous amount of capital, supporting the wider ecosystem, both innovation and in other areas.

So, they formed the Earth Trust, in Whitham, which owns thousands of acres of land along the Thames to protect that environment. So it was based upon their personal passions and it would be quite nice to see more of that passion, I think in Oxford. You do see it more in Cambridge. I don't know why. But, that does seem to be a lot more recycling of capital into, if you like, non-academic based, philanthropy.

[00:14:51] Susannah de Jager: It's really encouraging to hear you talk about that focus being both within the university, which is hugely valuable to the region, but outside of it, and I think all too often the enormity of the institution that is the University of Oxford can eclipse other elements of the innovation ecosystem here that are vast in their own right.

So for anyone listening, I think that's a point we would really like to make sure lands as well, that not all the innovation that comes out of Oxford is coming out of the university.

[00:15:24] Steve Burgess: No and I think in one of the reports that we produced with the Advanced Oxford, an organizationthat the trust also co-founded.

There are 700 early stage companies in there, but only 350 are from the university. So actually the university spinners are a minority in there. But you wouldn't think so.

[00:15:44] Susannah de Jager: Sir Martin and Lady Audrey have also been very successful as investors, and we've discussed the investor landscape here briefly in Oxford, and it's often dominated by a few large names. But you have non university affiliated companies. Now, how does their investor profile differ and what would you say to those listening who have perhaps not previously considered that Oxford investing might be for them?

[00:16:10] Steve Burgess: Yeah, I mean there's quite a big angel investor network. Again, blowing our own trumpet here. Also set up by the Trust.

Everybody knows it by Onion. Which is still one of the biggest angel investor networks in the UK. So that was formed by the Trust, to try to broaden the access to finance when there wasn't big venture capital funds around. I think one of the consequences of the big funds being either created or coming into Oxford has it squeezed the angel sector out, cause it's very difficult to do follow on funding to do that because the cost of follow on funding is so high. So it's sort of tilted the balance between a more even playing field to one that was heavily leveraged towards the large venture capital companies and if those venture capital companies are not that interested now in very early stage startup, cause the risk profile's high, you end up with this gap.

[00:17:03] Susannah de Jager: So you have fewer people that are experienced angel investors to fill it. I suppose the contrary argument would be that if you had those angel investors, and they weren't able to provide the follow on capital, was that having a dampening effect on the growth trajectory of some of those companies?

[00:17:22] Steve Burgess: I mean, you could say that I think it was more patient capital then. Let's say 10 years ago,people would have that, not this hockey stick effect of growth. And the presence of funds like OSE Park Walk with very big funds coming in, is you speed the growth of companies up in terms of scale and value and that makes it very hard for smaller investors or syndicates to actually continue on that line and be able to keep that same shareholding.

[00:17:49] Susannah de Jager: And potentially that you have a sort of forgotten middle where the growth opportunity at that speed that is required often by venture capital investors for their own return profiles is not there and that good ideas, that are maybe slower burn, don't have the patient capital that you're describing.

[00:18:06] Steve Burgess: Exactly. Exactly. So some of what we do is we do support, not so much with financial ones, but by supporting companies with subsidized space and conditions of occupancy of our Centers, is to try to help those that are bootstrapping their way. In the end, their ideas may not work. But if you don't try, and you don't put them into contact with Angel Investor networks, you'll never know, and maybe a little gem has, gone away because, there is no access to that funding from the bigger funds.

[00:18:35] Susannah de Jager: And I think those forces are so interesting, often when something hasn't succeeded, it's very easy to think it's because the fundamental technology wasn't good or there wasn't a good product market fit or something else went awry with the core proposition. But actually, all too often, it can be this misalignment of investor timelines, not even interest, but timelines with the underlying technology.

Or what we're about to see, which I'm already hearing from lots of startup companies in the ecosystem, is that because of the global macroeconomic uncertainty that we're seeing because of Trump's tariffs, everyone's just on pause. Which if you have a burn rate and nobody's pulling the trigger, can also mean that things stall for reasons completely outside of their control.

[00:19:20] Steve Burgess: Yeah, and if you've grown very quickly because money was freely available.You'll also fail quickly if that capital suddenly starts getting cut off.

[00:19:28] Susannah de Jager: So it feels like there needs to be a more sophisticated conversation around making sure that people take the right money, not just the available, but I mean, that's a privileged position to be in.

[00:19:38] Steve Burgess: And the other gap, I think in the market is in the family office area. It is not very well established here in Oxford. But family offices like the Woods had a family office which did investment into many companies, that have been incredibly successful. But there aren't any other ones that you would say there is a family office for X, Y, and Z here in Oxford. There are in Cambridge and there are in London. Doesn't seem to exist here.

So there's another source of capital that doesn't seem to be readily available for those ones that maybe are investing in research for a passion and for a reason, rather necessarily short term return.

[00:20:16] Susannah de Jager: And if you were speaking directly to family offices that might have that passion and be interested, where would you direct them to go and take that first step?

[00:20:26] Steve Burgess: Yeah, I mean, I think, you need to talk to the ecosystem, and there are organisations like Advanced Oxford and that which are a good gateway point to actually be a pointer to them. But the Oxford Trust also tries to help. But it's not matchmaking by any mean, but pointing people in the right direction of if we understand what the passion is and what the objectives are, we can suggest, why don't you talk to X, Y, and Z?

And what you are doing here with the podcast helps, I think broadcast that message a bit louder that Oxford actually is open to different investments and these are one of the ones thatare missing out of the portfolio of investment opportunities

[00:21:03] Susannah de Jager: Taking a slightly different perspective, Nicki, I'd love to hear the typical arc of an Oxford Trust company. From infancy all the way through, we obviously spoke about people coming in at STEM which I absolutely love hearing, but how did typical companies evolve and then fledge

[00:21:23] Nicki Campling: Okay. Firstly, definition of a typical company in the startup world. I'm not sure that exists.

[00:21:30] Susannah de Jager: Fair!

[00:21:30] Nicki Campling: But we'll run with it. So we also have an ecosystem support program, and actually at the moment we have a very, very early stage startup that we've provided a very small amount of subsidized lab space for, at the Wood Center.

Just two Founders working incredibly hard towards launching their product on the open market and they've just secured some investment, which is fantastic. So hopefully we can nurture them and they will grow.

[00:21:58] Susannah de Jager: And just to pause, what sort of level of investment, because I think often people don't know. Are we talking about 50,000 pounds? Are we talking about 250?

[00:22:06] Nicki Campling: Yeah, they secured 150,000. Which was a mixture of grant funding, and angel funding. Which is fantastic. Our companies tend to quite organically grow. The Wood Center originally was designed really for those startups requiring that first lab space and office space of say, circa 500 square foot.

We have companies that have considerably more than that, because they've grown with us and as space has become available, they've asked whether they can migrate into it. Which is a happy problem to have.

We also have a company, who started with us as a relatively small team, of say four to six people, and they were acquired by a big US pharmaceutical, and are growing exponentially. They're soon to be a team of circa 50. That kind of gives you an idea of the scale that we work across, which is a pretty big spectrum really when you think about it.

[00:23:06] Steve Burgess: Yeah, one of the exemplar companies that we use is the company Optellum. They started in the Oxford Center for Innovation and are still there and have grown. But they came out of Perspectum Diagnostics. Who also started in the Oxford Center for Innovation, who themselves came out of Mirada Diagnostics, and the link with that is Professor Mike Brady because he's behind the start of all of them.

But basically it's all like we're in grandchild mode.And they started off two people again, they're now to 30. But most of their investment is now going into the US. Yeah, so they're keeping their UK base relatively small for the size of the company that they've become because they're investing in the US which is where their technology is being applied. Because the NHS is so slow in adopting new technologies and the US is not.

So we're seeing that type of shift where companies are growing, not necessarily leaving, but growing outside of the UK. And I think that trend is going to continue, unless there's a radical shift in the way that the NHS adopts new technologies.

[00:24:08] Susannah de Jager: Agreed. I've had the pleasure of meeting Sir Michael Brady and he's a real poster boy for amazing innovation in Oxford. But it's really such a positive reinforcement of how well your model works. Clearly, the fact that they've chosen each time to come and found within your Innovation Centers is a massive compliment.

Steve, there's a perspective that Oxford is not in need of capital. We've touched upon it briefly, but it couldn't really be further from the truth, and in fact, some of the available capital for starting and scaling companies is, as we know, slowing down. Huge need to keep up momentum of some of these amazing technologies.

We have spoken about some of the strange effects of the wrong money already. But there's massive capacity coming on of labs and office space in the next few years. How do you view the opportunity for investors.

[00:24:59] Steve Burgess: I think this is going to be a very interesting space to watch that has issues. I rightly said, a massive amount ofinnovation spaces. we'll call them science parks because these are large scale developments, of many hundreds of thousands of square feet. That were basically designed and went into planning and started in the 2020/2021 boom years where the portfolio coming out of the university was looking extraordinarily strong, and there was a lot of cash to develop with that.

That portfolio is less encouraging at the moment, and certainly the cash to support those ones is also more constrained, and as a consequence, there isn't the companies coming out from the native ecosystem to fill the capacity that is coming on stream. So I think that is going to be key for Oxford is being able to attract external investment. Something that again, our friends in Cambridge managed to do very well. Not so much here in Oxford. But companies like Moderna setting up in Harwell, and of course the Ellison Institute are going to be needed to have that scale already formed to be able to fill these gaps.

[00:26:11] Susannah de Jager: Really interesting. It'll be, interesting to see what that does to prices of office space too, because I've spoken to founders who have pointed out the differential between some of the close to Oxford price per square foot, and when you go further out, particularly if you need large scale manufacturing space, people building out their own spaces as they grow. So it'll be interesting to see how some of those developments fair as they come online.

[00:26:37] Steve Burgess: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:26:39] Susannah de Jager: So Nicki, can you describe a little bit more, we've spoken about the two strands of the Oxford Trust and you've got the STEM and you're recycling that capital. It's a huge amount. It's a million pounds per annum, which is a vast investment into educating children in the region and absolutely so wonderful.

How do they feed one another?

[00:26:58] Nicki Campling: I think Steve, mentioned one of the companies earlier, who his inspiration for starting a company was sparked by attending our Science Oxford Center. So I guess that's one way that we have that circularfeeding into each other. The education landscape it's rapidly changing, and again, we are on the forefront of that.

What we offer in terms of primary through to secondary,those people could in turn, feed those growing companies that we have within our innovation centers.

It's kind of a real place of nurture and inspiration and actually sparking the excitement in these young people to explore entrepreneurialism and explore a lab environment, and certainly within our, secondary, program, we've held careers, weeks and things like that, and our innovation companies have actually come into those programs and supported them and spoken about their personal experiences as a founder and why they do what they do. And these young people have been really inspired by these startup business founders. But it's also worked both ways because having spoken to a couple of the founders, they were blown away by the caliber of questions that they were being asked by these, secondary school pupils. It's a really exciting place to be, and as ever, there's always more that can be done. I think so much more now is known about, neurodiversity, for example, and how traditional roots are not always the best route, for every young person.

[00:28:39] Susannah de Jager: I think it's so important, the point you're drawing through there that, these jobs are not going to be one size fits all. It's not just PhDs. There are the admin jobs. There are the lab techs. There are so many other things that can come through other routes, and it's something that I've had very engaging discussions with people in the Oxford ecosystem about how we can make sure that innovation is not, both perceived and impactful, for the elite because it's not and it shouldn't be, and I think what you are doing is so important as a piece of that puzzle.

I'd really love to, just for anyone listening who has kind of philanthropic goals in mind and aspirations, understand the mechanics of the capital that was put in.

Is it now self-sustaining between the surpluses from the investments you make and the STEM education?

[00:29:30] Steve Burgess: Yes, our core activities are self-sustaining, and that was the model that Audrey and Martin set up. What they didn't want is to have a charity that was continually going back and always asking for money.

So we were set up to be sustainable, and that's the model that the trustee board, over this last 40 years, has always insisted that we maintain and I think all of the executive team in that buy into this. That there is no success in the STEM education unless the innovation centers are successful.

A sustainable investment of philanthropy is what really makes the difference in the long term.

[00:30:04] Susannah de Jager: So you were endowed and therefore you now sustain that, and I think, again, coming back to a point we touched upon earlier, because you're a charity, but especially because you are a self-sustaining charity, it allows you to make those decisions on very different basis and look at your long-term values and how to maintain them in a way that if you either weren't a charity or you were a charity going out for fundraising every year, you would have to flip to what the latest trends were. And it's just distracting and time consuming. And by the way, not terribly successful at the moment for anyone.

[00:30:38] Steve Burgess: No,That's exactly the reasons why we do what we do. We were incredibly lucky thatAudrey and Martin had such,a viewpoint of sustainability on their philanthropic activities. The same with the other sister charities that we have. They're also set up in a similar way.

[00:30:56] Susannah de Jager: So Nicki, we've obviously spoken about the direct investments, but you have a huge property portfolio as well, and you've been investing in that in order to further sustain the model that Steve was just describing. Can you talk a little bit about how that's evolving and what you've invested in most recently?

[00:31:14] Nicki Campling: Of course. So historically, in the last six years, we have built the Wood Center for Innovation We've also mobilized our second Oxford Center for Innovation in the city center, and then we're embarking on a brand new innovation center, which will be on our Wood Center site, called the Aspen Building. Which will be very similar to what we have currently. However, this will be designed more for those growing companies we spoke about earlier. So those that are not quite ready for the big science parks, but need to kind of take their second step out of their first home.

From a sustainability point of view, for the Trust, we invest in our infrastructure and we have to continue to invest in our facilities in order to remain sustainable in the way we do, and actually in the last six years, we've probably spent circa 20 million on our property portfolio.

[00:32:14] Susannah de Jager: Finally, thank you. This has been such an interesting conversation, but just as a final question for you both. When you are pitching founders as to what the Oxford Trust can offer, what would be the three words, or you can have a sentence, that you would describe as the differentiating factor or the opportunity for people that want to found within your Innovation Centers?

[00:32:37] Steve Burgess: The key, differentiator really for that is the fact that we are a charity and it's been set up to sustain that charitable model, and if they're tech companies and they're really passionate about the future generations coming through, then the work that we do in the STEM education, has this virtuous circle.

So they'll be charged a fair price for the services that we provide in terms of business support and all of the other infrastructure. But they should also be safe in the knowledge that any surplus does go towards the next generation of scientists and entrepreneurs to continue to build the Oxford ecosystem.

[00:33:14] Nicki Campling: I'll give you three words. So I will go with Community, connectivity and flexibility.

[00:33:22] Susannah de Jager: Thank you so much for joining me today. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you both and learn more.

[00:33:27] Steve Burgess: Thank you much.

[00:33:28] Nicki Campling: Thank you for having us.

[00:33:29] Susannah de Jager: Thanks for listening to this episode of Oxford+, presented by me, Susannah de Jager. If you want to stay up to date with all things Oxford+, please visit our website, oxfordplus.co.uk and sign up for our newsletter so you never miss an update. Oxford+ was made in partnership with Mishcon de Reya and is produced and edited by Story Ninety-Four.