Mike Emmerich Speech for Agma Summit

INNOVATION & ENTERPRISE LAUNCH, 23 JAN 2011

BARON FRANKAL

TALENT

CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY

I will try spend just a few minutes talking not about what we need to do, but what we are actually doing. Based on the MIER, and much consultation, the ten authorities and a wide variety of partners agreed the Greater Manchester Strategy. This consensus about what we need to do also extends to the government, not only the old one but also the new - as they fundamentally buy the fact that we are one of the few places in the UK whose economic performance can shift the national picture. They know too that GMS is our plan, and on its merits we will fail or succeed.

The delivery of GMS is taking place of course in an excruciatingly cash-strapped environment where we need to avoid duplication at all costs, but also avoid paralysis. That just places even more weight on the evidence and processes we have to ensure that what we do has maximum impact.

I focus on one of the 11 Strategic Priorities we chose, and one which New Economy was tasked with delivering: attracting, retaining and nurturing the best talent.

This is a politically difficult (and so historically underdeveloped) agenda, as why should we spend our brain power on people that don’t even live in Greater Manchester ? The reason, as MIER confirms, is that the evidence points to our need for the skills, capital, innovation and firms that come with this talent, and that only cities that are underpinned by the very best talent succeed in securing growth and prosperity: entrepreneurs that start up and run the most successful businesses, a pool of quality graduates, employees that are creative and dynamic and leaders of industry and managers of people that inspire passion.

There is no resource for this task either, meaning that the only way to deliver is to bring together the people that actually work in this world, like Pro.Manchester and its 300 members – you. That is why talent is such a good example of where Greater Manchester is getting it right. This is mainstream: we are sweating the assets that we have, adding value to existing activity, filling gaps and working the systems and organisations that exist, drawing on your knowledge in, I hope, a more focused, strategic and effective way.

We are making considerable progress, we being a broad range of partners, public and private, that have a strategic and operational interest in talent. There’s an inclusive GMS Talent Working Group taking the work forward, a group that is dynamic and flexible, not a formal board with rigid procedures. It has grown organically through the commitment of its members as we have together gone on the journey of thinking through what interventions would have the most impact and what systems and resources are needed, by all of us, to deliver. The group have actively developed the projects, reprioritising other things so that the projects that move are those there is the evidence and buy-in for, leveraging each others’ efforts – to get more of the talent we need.

There are five main talent projects, each worked into detail, each moving into the delivery stage, taking advantage of resources that already exist.

The first is a targeted and sustained marketing campaign focused on particular groups, in London and the South East, whose talents we need here, but who, the evidence tells us, and the private sector confirm, have a sometimes negative perception of Greater Manchester. This work is being led by Marketing Manchester and is designed to challenge and change how those groups view living and working in Manchester.

The second is about what we can do to harness more of the talent that flows into our universities. Evidence suggests that a strong anchor comes from linking graduates to firms, through things like graduate placements. This is not rocket science: it is matching the quality graduates to firms that see the value in having them, and we need our GMS team to be a vital catalyst, a dynamo and the innovative creator of a mass clearing house for that supply of quality graduates the universities in the group bring, to the demand of firms that the private sector helps stimulate.

As my time is short, I won’t give you any detail about the global ambassadors scheme, that is building worldwide social capital for us, or our efforts to establish the international school that our global firms tells us is needed to attract the world’s top talent.

Nor will I talk about some of the other GMS priorities New Economy is tasked with: improving life chances in our most deprived areas, getting more people higher up the skills ladder, raising our levels of international connectivity and broadening our economic base, or our other work like building the Single Investment Framework to drive value and return from the investments Evergreen, RGF, ERDF and Tax Incremental Financing will make. “It’s still the economy, stupid”, and our efforts – all our efforts – are designed to help bring growth and prosperity.

The intervention we are gathered here today to explore, challenge and develop is another off that “talent” production line, and deals head on with access to start-up and growth capital, a major issue facing our (and our competitors’) most innovative entrepreneurs. This is a question we as a city are trying to answer in a number of different ways, using the innovation groups and knowledge that is spread liberally in our institutions, but also, probably most vitally, in our private sector. That’s why we sought to leverage the expertise of the UK’s second largest financial sector, marshaled expertly by John & Pro-Manchester, to conduct, free of charge, in the service of the city, the review we are exploring today about what could practically be done to aid these funding problems, make capital flow more freely from those that have it to those that can do expansionary things with it, and in so doing help bolster our brand as the place to do business.

Not everyone will agree with everything in the report, nor think that it is a priority for ever-diminishing resources, but we can all very much welcome the excellent contribution to the debate that the report makes, and which I’d like to thank John very much for.

In here are nuggets that can perhaps help edge us towards where we aspire to be, a world class city not only in our marketing, but with a roster of people to prove it, people helping build the long-term sustainable economic growth that ALL our residents will benefit from – and grow up with, this priority is as much about nurturing talent as it is retaining and attracting it.

That’s the plan, that’s the framework, and I am delighted to see so many people here today to please add your voices and your actions to help us move Manchester forward together.