Why Independent Businesses And Smarter Policy Can Save Our High Streets

Start with a simple truth: you never say you’re from a retail park. We dig into what makes a place feel alive with Professor Lee Sparks, whose four decades in retail studies and university leadership reveal how business models, planning choices, and community action shape the heart of a city. From the early lessons of a Queensland shopping centre to chairing Scotland’s Towns Partnership, Lee maps the real story behind “the death of the high street” and shows where the renewal is already taking root.

We talk data and decisions: online sales now hover around 28–30%, decentralised shopping has thinned footfall, and employers wrestle with rising costs. Yet beneath the headlines, independents and smaller chains are moving into spaces vacated by overbuilt nationals, offering authentic products and richer service. Lee explains why local spend sticks—accountants, suppliers, trades—and how tools like Scotland Loves Local kept money in communities during Covid and continue to strengthen loyalty. We explore Stirling’s emerging ecosystem of makers, cook schools, and galleries, and why experiential retail beats functional errands for drawing people back to town.

Then we get practical about unlocking empty buildings. Upper floors matter for housing, safety and vibrancy; heritage sites can shift from dust to destination with the right finance, sequencing, and flexible planning. We connect the dots between direct rail links, a growing film studio presence, and the National Aquaculture Technology Innovation Hub—and how each can pull visitors and students into the city centre. Lee calls for universities to regain an entrepreneurial edge, valuing impact and live business projects as much as papers, and for policy to price the true costs of car-centric sprawl while making adaptive reuse easier.

If you care about thriving main streets, stronger local economies, and giving people a reason to linger, this conversation is a playbook. Subscribe, share with a fellow town-centre champion, and leave a review with one idea your city should try next.

Transcript

From Wales To Stirling

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Sterling Business Podcast from Studio King Street in the heart of Sterling. Today I've got a very interesting guest, Dr. Lee Spox, professor of retail studies at Sterling University.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

So the first question I've I've really got for you, Lee, is uh how how did a Welshman end up in Stirling?

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Um, yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? I've lived in Sterling longer than I've lived anywhere else of my life. I came to Stirling first in 1983. Um I came for six months. Um I've somehow hung around for the best part of 40 odd years now. So short-term contract at the university as a research assistant, and it was expanding at that time. I then got a job as a lecturer and have carried on. They keep on wanting to employ me, so I've actually stayed there all this time. Had offers to go elsewhere, but Sterling's a great place and a great university, and I really enjoy it.

Academic Path And Leadership Roles

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Yeah. Fantastic. So talk a little tell us a little bit about your career at the university then since you came in as a research assistant back in.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Um I came as a research assistant, um, became a lecture, senior lecture fairly quickly, and then in 1992 I became professor of retail studies. Um that's quite early to become a professor, and uh since then I've carried on with my professorial activities, but also done a bit on the admin side of the university. So I was Dean of the Business School, I was the founding director of the graduate school at the university. And then from 2016 to 2024, I was deputy principal of the university. And I stepped down from that um, thankfully, um, in 2024, and I'm now employed uh a day a week at the university, um doing professorial uh stuff and a few other bits and pieces.

Falling For Place: Geography To Retail

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Okay, so you obviously know a lot of people in the university, um, you know, and you it sounds like you've been involved in a number of the different faculties in one way or the other, whether that's been a cross across functional role, like deputy principal, I guess, but also you know, you've you've been involved in the business faculty. So um so I I know you're very passionate about business in general and how you know in particular with regards to kind of Stirling and and other towns and cities across Scotland. Uh why is this? Why do you take such a keen interest in business uh in in terms of supporting their activities and initiatives in cities and towns?

SPEAKER_01 2:48

It m might be worthwhile going back um into the real dark past. Um in 1978, um I got a student exchange to go to Australia. I was doing an undergraduate degree at Cambridge. My degree was geography. So geography is all about place for me. It's human geography I was doing. Um and I went to work uh for three months over in Australia and in Townsville in northern Queensland, founded by a Scott, Robert Towns. Um Townsville was interesting. I worked for the planning department, um, and they said you've got to do a project while you're here, and you have two choices. You can either look at the impact of our new regional shopping centre, which has just opened, or you can look at the impact of our major swimming pool. Then they said the problem is it's winter, 80 degrees Fahrenheit, winter, um but the swimming pool's shut. So you have a choice.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

But you don't really have a choice.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

No, not a choice. It was a Hobson's choice. Um so I was asked to do some work on the regional shopping centre, and that got me into the impact of change in retailing and how retailing was impacting places at the very early stage of that in Australia, and then I was fortunate enough to get a a PhD down in Wales, uh, which allowed me to look at the employment aspects of changes in retailing, and from that there's been this long-term interest in structural change and social change and how it all interacts. Um, I would be false to say I've always been concerned about the impact of business change like that on town centres and on high streets. I've always felt that retail had to modernize and businesses have to modernize. Uh, but I think a realization came post 2000 that we were pushing that far too far and becoming far too car-centric, and that was damaging our centres. And so that's where the interest in both promoting business, understanding businesses from an academic point of view and a business point of view comes, but then the impacts that businesses have on place.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Oh, right, okay. That's that that's interesting. So I know obviously in our towns and city centres across Scotland, um we have a ha have a lot of um disused buildings now, okay. Um I think pretty much if you if you take Edinburgh and Glasgow out of the equation, although you do find a little bit of it going on there as well. Um, you know, they tend to take care of themselves those particular locations. But um through what bodies and initiatives do you typically get involved in supporting um some of that activity that, you know, in in some of these kind of lesser-known cities and towns um in terms of support?

SPEAKER_01 5:27

Um I think the start of really getting heavily involved. I always I've always been an academic who's always been involved in business. I've always wanted I don't feel that universities are places that somehow should be sacred and people shouldn't go into them, and academics certainly should never leave them. They need to get out and work with business. So I've always had in involvement with business, done business projects, done work for m some of the major retailers as well as for local governments about impacts and so on. So uh the big change I think came in, and people may recall the Mary Portis report down in England, the Portis Review of High Streets. There was a Scottish equivalent um just done just after, which was the Fraser Review, the National Review of Town Centres.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

I've heard that one.

Beyond Decline: Assets And Identity

SPEAKER_01 6:14

And I think those two things are really interesting in that England saw what was going on in place as a retail problem, whereas in Scotland we perceived it as a town centre problem. And I was the the academic who was on the National Review of Town Centres, and from that came the Town Centre Action Plan, and then Scotland's Towns Partnership was the organization that tried to corral and amplify what good things were going on in town centres. And so I've been chair of the board for Scotland's Towns Partnership since 2013-2014. Right. And our role is to try and promote town centres, try and work with government to improve town centres, to try and push government and policymakers to change the landscape for town centres, and to amplify a lot of the good things that are going on. It's interesting that people have the narrative of the death of the high street and the decline of the high street, and place isn't what it is. And that's the place isn't what it is. Consumers have changed, society's changed, where we live, we work, we play has changed. So we should expect these impacts, which leads to some of those vacant spaces. But if you look around most town centres, they've got some great assets. And you look around most town centres, they've also got some really interesting independent businesses coming into these spaces. And we need to rebalance that narrative that actually there's a lot of good stuff going on. How much more could go on if we actually tilted the playing field back towards town centres and places? Because they are the most socially and economically viable viable opportunities we have. They're really you never say you come from a retail warehouse park. You say you come from a town, from a place. There's an identity to that which is really important.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

That's an interesting observation though. So it's kind of the the high street, if you like, within our towns, within our cities have always been um have always related to retail and to a degree hospitality and you know, cafes and and and those types of services. But uh I think the kind of demographic is changing rapidly in terms of you know people viewing opportunities differently in our towns. Um it's all business at the end of the day, but it doesn't necessarily always need to be kind of retail-oriented. Um where do you think we are with regards to the kind of retail sector at the moment? Um, given e-commerce made a big impact in the early days. We had the COVID stopping people from kind of you know going out and shopping and and uh and and and and doing their thing. We've now got the cost of a living crisis. Where would you say that we currently sit in that kind of retail cycle as a as a country?

Retail’s Reset: Online, Costs, Opportunity

SPEAKER_01 8:55

There's no doubt that that retailing um has had a tough time. Um it's gone through difficult periods, as you've said. Um if we think about internet retailing, then online sales are now roughly about 28 to 30 percent of retail sales. So a big chunk of retail sales has moved away from the physical channel. Um and there are issues about why that is, how that is. We've also decentralized enormously in where our shops are, so we should expect that impact on our town centers. For retail businesses, they are looking at where their costs are, they're looking at how they get consumers in, very worried about things like the national insurance employer increase that came in a couple year and a bit ago, uh, that came out of absolutely nowhere, and they're finding it tough. All these things have have really hit them. But underneath that, I think there's an entrepreneurial spirit for independence that are really good, and there's also a lot of smaller chains that are now beginning to expand and recognizing that the overexpansion of the big chains, the several hundred stores across the UK, which they've withdrawn from, provides opportunities for things that are perhaps now a bit more locally authentic in a variety of ways. So there's there's some really interesting things going on underneath that doesn't really get the headlines. Having said that, it's always a struggle. Retailing's always a battle for consumer share of wallet. So that's always going to be the fight that retailers have.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

Yeah, and I I I noticed that Stirling, and I'm sure a lot of the other towns and cities across Scotland are are probably in a very kind of similar kind of um have a similar focus, but there's a big push around independent Stirling as part of the business improvement district, um really supporting those kind of local local providers, local, you know, uh suppliers, you know, local retailers, local produce. Um how big of an impact do you see that having on communities like Sterling and other other towns and cities?

Power Of Independents And Local Spend

SPEAKER_01 10:53

That local impact is really important. If we think about the model we built with the decentralized stores and the big national and multinational retailers, then much of the wealth that's generated by that flows outside. It doesn't stay in the local area. And so that's really another reason why places have struggled, because the wealth isn't there. People don't invest in this in the town centre, they don't invest in the buildings that we've got there. Independent businesses are different because they actually have that network of links that they have. An independent small shopkeeper is probably going to have an independent accountant. They're probably going to have a range of other independent links that they buy from. That builds that ecosystem and ecostructure that allows places to lock that money in. Governments, Scottish Government's Community Wealth Building Act is all a part of doing that and trying to develop that. So I think there's good things around people recognizing what can be done. And in terms of consumers, one of the things during COVID that Scotland's Towns Partnership did was launch a Scotland's Loves Local card. And the idea of that is you can only use it in physical shops, you can only use it in local areas, and that locks in the spend to the local areas. And that proved really important in keeping spend going in shops during COVID, but also now is a brand in its own right. And again, I think there's a lot more we could put through things like Scotland Loves Local that supports the local businesses, keeps the spend in the local area, and therefore encourages the businesses to invest, but also to spend themselves in the local area. That's a real positive cycle if we can develop that more strongly. And I think to go to Stirling, if you look at the independence around in Sterling, you look at some of the developments that have gone on within the town centre, I think that is what we're beginning to see. A much more collaborative, self-sustaining network of businesses that actually is quite distinctive, which is the other important thing. I don't think people really want to come to Sterling to see the same old things they can see anywhere else. Yeah. They want to see and come and see things that are different, that are unique, that are part of the place, part of the heritage, and all the different assets that we actually have here that we need to really try and embrace.

Building A Distinctive Stirling Offer

SPEAKER_00 12:58

Yeah, no, that's a great point. I I definitely resonate with that with regards to my business here. Um, you know, I'm very city centre-centric, I'm right in the heart of Sterling where we where we're sat now. Um and, you know, our whole kind of philosophy concept is community wealth building, kind of supporting other local businesses, whether that's the local cafe, the bar, the restaurant. We don't have a bar, we don't have a restaurant. Our whole strategy is to push people out into the community to spend their money in the local community. And we get a lot of goodwill from that as a as a result of being a business doing that type of thing. So I can definitely see how the local impact translates both ways. Um, you know, if we were a large hotel with our own restaurant and bar, we're keeping, you know, which maybe a lot of the larger chains might, you know, might typically be, they're gonna, you know, try and keep as much of that, you know, spend in-house. Um but we're we're the complete opposite. We're promoting those different types of activities and things outside of the building. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

And if you think about the way the chains hotel chains promote that, they are promoting that you come here and you don't go outside. You stay inside. It is all about trying to keep that spend, as you say, in there. Whereas I think the model that you have here is very different from that point of view. And clearly one of the other things I've taken on since my semi-retirement is I'm chair of made in Sterling. Right. So it's the it's the shop over the road from here, uh, the artist collective there, and it's great to see some of the paintings in here that have come from the business then. Again, it's about reinforcing what are the links, how can we work together? What are the opportunities to cross-promote here that will tie these businesses together and actually keep that spend and amplify that spend?

Hotels, Ecosystems And Made In Stirling

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Yeah, it's an i again, an interesting observation. We spent a lot of time with Visit Scotland, for example, um, at their annual Connect event. Got one coming up, I think, in a couple of months' time in Glasgow. And the travel trade in particular is a is a big focus for us, being a being a hotelier. We want to try and bring you know tour operators and tourists into our property. Well and the whole but the whole objective is yes, we obviously we're a commercial business, we we want to generate revenue from that. But the focus is to try and keep people in Stirling for longer. So we typically promote Stirling more than we promote our our facility, because we we've we find that if we offer more differentiated things to do when they come to Sterling, so yes, you can come and see the castle and all the historical kind of features like the monument. Uh, but people want to do different things. If they're here for three or four days, well, you know, we can um send them to a local cook school or a local craft area within Maiden Stirling to do something a bit different to what they would typically do, and we can promote those types of things, you know, with regards to our initiatives. So yeah, uh just another good example, I guess, of what you're what you're saying there in terms of bringing communities together and helping each other's businesses uh be successful.

Tourism Links And Longer Stays

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Yeah, and we I think we're beginning to see that ecosystem here. If you just look at the independent shops around in Sterling, you see a large range of that. You mentioned the Cook School, they're made in Sterling, obviously I'm involved in, but you've got radical Weavers as well, you've got other opportunities to actually keep people within the town centre and to actually get to have great experiences. And so much more, and if we go back to the retail issue, how much of retailing is boringly functional as opposed to how much is actually experiential. I think people want something different, want something more experiential. They want to feel something distinct about it rather than go in, buy something, get out as fast as you can, which is what a lot of retailers have defaulted to in many ways. So uh You asked earlier about where is retailing. I think we're on the cusp of that change. We're seeing more and more of that kind of thing. And I and I think we see the same in places. Why do people want to come to Stirling? It can be because you've got the Wallace, Banning Ben Castle, but actually there's something really good about the heart of Stirling as well, and all of those things fitting together. The same is true of many other town centres across Scotland. When we talk about the problems town centres have or the death of the high street, it's the wrong starting point. The starting point should be what assets does a place have? Whether it's that theatre we haven't really thought about for too long that could have something done to it, whether it's some of the other buildings that could be repurposed in certain ways, whether we could actually in Stirling get the arcade into some form that would actually be something or a Victorian gem that is so underused here. There's so many good things we can do in Stirling if we can actually try and pull that together. And going back to government, get government to actually recognize that town centres need to be supported and should be supported because of all of the good things that happen in them and all the accessibility they have that you don't get for many of these other things elsewhere.

Experiential Retail Over Functional Shopping

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Yeah, as you say, there's some beautiful assets, particularly in some of the aging or older cities like Sterling, that have just sat there gathering dust for a long, long time. And you know, from an entrepreneur perspective, um property development, property investment, what I'm certainly starting to see within my communities, because I'm part of some of those communities myself, I'm a property developer, that's ultimately what I'm at the heart of what I've become a hotel year. That wasn't by design. Uh we did we built a hotel, developed a hotel, and uh you know that's um we've gone into the operational phase now. But you know, I'm certainly starting to see um a lot of innovation coming from uh private investors, private investment into the area and developers looking to complete the change, change the the use of buildings to become something very different to what they were originally intended to be, um whether that be historically retail or council buildings or municipal buildings, etc. What are you seeing from an entrepreneurial ship across Scotland? Are you seeing much of that yourself in the work that you do?

Repurposing Buildings And Upper Floors

SPEAKER_01 18:57

Yeah, I I think there's real interest in um the assets that are around the place. There's a difficulty in some cases unlocking some of the finance. There's some retinuo reticence in some places of some counsels about what's actually been taking place in those buildings. How can they change the use to that? It's something they're not quite as used to as they might be, so there's sometimes a bit of gulp. We're also talking in many cases, and this is again a prime example where we are, we're talking about upper floors as well. So we've got to think of the town centre not just on the ground floor and the retail component we've always traditionally had, but how do we get to use the great spaces that are up here? How do we change those spaces and get access to them? And I think we're seeing that. It's a slower process than it should be. I think there are things around the cost structures that government, national government could do things with. There are things about adding disincentives to out-of-town developments or making them pay the real cost that they're actually putting on the environment and the economy and on society. And that's not just retailing, that's housing all of the outer sound developments we have. If we build car-centric places, people are going to be locked into those places through the car. We actually want them to be closer to town. We want people living in the town centre, we want footfall and vibrancy in the town centre and reasons for people to engage in the town centre. Are we seeing that? Yes. Are we seeing enough of it? Not really. Um having talked to a number of developers and some of the big schemes about housing in town centres, the difficulties, the cost, the sequencing you have to do to unlock the revenue stream in order to afford the next bit of it, the next bit of it. That's really not understood as well as it might be. So the question is how can we get local and national governments to recognize that by being a bit more flexible, actually an awful lot of good can come from it.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

Yeah, and I mean Sterling, another good example. You know, we're a university town. Um the connection between the university and the city centre needs needs to obviously continue to develop and get stronger because you know, we're bringing footfall in through students or parents visiting their, you know, their um you know, their kids and what have you that are at university here. So um there's obviously the connection with you know different kinds of industries and sectors as well between the university, so film and media being a great example of that. Um you know, what's your perspective of how we could be doing better in that regard?

Housing, Policy Levers And Car-Centric Costs

SPEAKER_01 21:33

It's interesting to me that when the university was established in the 1960s, um, and I wasn't there at that time, um, it was set up really because the town council drove it. Um, it wasn't Stirling Regional Council, it wasn't Central Region at that time, it wasn't Sterling in the broader sense we have now, it was the town drove the establishment of the university. I very much saw. It as something that would work in close proximity to the city centre, then the town centre. I think over time that perhaps hasn't worked as much as we would have liked it to work. Having said that, the businesses do benefit in all sorts of ways, because if we've got 13,000 students there for a number of weeks of the year, then that is a real boost to both bars, restaurants, hosp or hospitality when their parents come, you say, for graduation or for other visits. But I think there are things that could be promoted rather better about the facilities we have in the centre, about reasons to come to Stirling as a place, which also means why you come as a student as well, and then how the businesses can target that particular demographic. It is a big component of what the population of Stirling is, and I think isn't as visible in the town centre as it might be. It would be nice to see a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

I can totally resonate with that. I went to Manchester, for example, and the the whole ethos of being a student in Manchester was based around the vibrance of the city for students. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

When I was Deputy Pensal, we talked an awful lot about the fact that if Stirling as a city centre didn't look welcoming, didn't feel welcoming, didn't have the facilities that students might want, then it's a much harder sell for us to get students to come to the universities. Because as much as an academic, I'd love to say they only come because the academic courses are brilliant, and they are, that's not true. They have a life beyond the lecture hall, so they need to feel comfortable in a place. Now, Sterling's quite good around some of those things. It was one of the best places to live in the UK, one of the safest cities to be have a university in the UK. It's got some things that resonate with particular student groups. So I think there's a lot more the university could do with the town centre around that.

University–City Centre Connection

SPEAKER_00 23:50

I think there are natural things happening as well, I guess, in from a business perspective, like the film studio, but then also things like the Lumore Trains uh initiative that's starting probably within a month or two, uh, where they're going to be kind of providing a service four times a day directly from London straight into Stirling. So they've obviously seen they're a commercial business, they've seen some benefit in doing that to try and kind of drive more footfall to Stirling. Um we've interviewed the uh the chief executive on this podcast, and his big ethos, he was telling us, um, is to help promote local businesses, have their produce from Sterling, for example, um sold on the trains, so that you know there's a kind of branding and a connection with Sterling as well as just providing a kind of rail service. So they're looking for differentiation and potentially loyalty programs and what have you to uh so all of these kind of things are all going to help. Um but again, making that connection back to the university, I guess, is gonna be pretty critical. And like maybe some more thought needs to touch you go into it.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

It is all about connections. You know, you know, the arts and humanities departments um certainly have worked with made in Sterling as a as an example of that. I think other opportunities that could be done there. Um I think the business school and the opportunities it could give its students by working with local businesses in all sorts of ways, I think is really pl really good. I'm always told that our digital media students um tend to go to Glasgow and Edinburgh once they graduate because there's no facilities and no opportunities here in Stirling. The film studios and some of the developments around that may hopefully change those sort of things. We have a world-renowned Institute of Aquaculture, which has just opened the National Aquaculture Technology Innovation Hub up there. So that's going to be bringing national, international people in there. Yeah. This is the sort of thing we ought to be using to promote the town centre when we're doing that from the from the university point of view, and vice versa. You know, I I think most people in the university are proud that they're actually the university is in Stirling and it is a bit different.

Trains, Studios And Aquaculture Momentum

SPEAKER_00 26:01

And it is a stunning campus.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

I don't think I've seen many campuses quite like it. It it is it is a fabulous environment, but equally having the city centre and all the other good things about Stirling on the doorstep as well is what makes that experience. It's not just locking our students into the campus. But I think we don't make enough of that and don't think through what the ideas are at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

Okay, so we're coming to the end of our conversation, Lee. So um I'm gonna ask you this question. Uh now older, wiser, very experienced in the world of academia and business, uh, you've obviously travelled the world and you've seen it in other countries as well, like Australia, you mentioned earlier. What would you say to your younger self if you were starting out your career again?

Advice To A Younger Academic Self

SPEAKER_01 26:47

Um I think the lo I think the life of um academics has now become somewhat different than it was when I started out. Um a bit of the story I didn't say is that when I came to Stirling, we just had massive cuts in Stirling, the Thatcher cuts of the of the university. And that um allowed uh film and media, aquaculture, and a range of other subjects, including retail and business, um, to go off and do what they wanted to do. So we were given license by the then principal, the then um head management of the university to be as entrepreneurial as we possibly could be, and to make sure you talked to business all the way through and got what they wanted as part of the academic side. And that was great. I think we began to get a bit more middle-aged as a university and individually. Um lost a bit of that. And I think what universities now need to do, and therefore what I'd say is recapture that spirit now of what we had to really get out and do things. Um I had a great time. I wouldn't have stayed here for 40 odd years if I hadn't hadn't been great and had real opportunities. Um there's n uh you know, I'm there's not much I'd say to that 20-year-old at that point that I wouldn't want to do different. But I think somewhere along the way we lost that sense of of real spirit of ad entrepreneurship, adventure, working with business, and feeling that actually if I spent most of the time outside the university, I was probably doing a better job for the university as a consequence. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Very interesting. So, in terms of um where the univers uh universities in general, let's take Scotland, because it's obviously a kind of big, big, big geography in itself, um, do you think they're in uh are we are we about to see a a change? Do you think there needs to be a um a wave of innovation across our universities? You know, you hear in the press, for example, a lot of universities are kind of struggling financially. Um you know, lack of in international students coming in and other reasons for that. What would you say, just to kind of you know round round us off here, some of the things that you would like to see change in the universities across Scotland?

Universities’ Finances And Entrepreneurial Culture

SPEAKER_01 29:11

Universities as a whole within Scotland and also within the UK generally are struggling financially. They're struggling financially because some of the basis on which they were told to plan and asked to plan were cut away from them by UK government changes and Brexit had a big impact on that. That took away our European students, um, the international and the immigration um arguments have taken away most of the student international student numbers that we had. Now, why those are in the immigration numbers is a bizarre, bizarre figure. Um, in some senses, things have been done to universities that they didn't expect, and that's caused some of the financial issues. Having said that, um universities have also internally um I think valued some of the wrong things. So valuing research for its own sake as opposed to research that is for economy's sake, for business sake, for example.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

Well, back to your point earlier about you are left to be entrepreneurial when you're Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

And they are like many organizations when they grow to reasonable sizes, and there are big, you know, it's the universities are big organizations. They do tend to get a bit bureaucratic, a bit centralized, and freeing up some of that and building back to that entrepreneurial state, I think, would be a very good thing for most universities. And getting our students out into opportunities to work with businesses over periods of their degrees, and I think we're seeing more of that coming through now. I think that can only be for the better.

SPEAKER_00 30:39

Brilliant. Well, Lee, thank you for coming along. Really appreciated the time. Um, vast of experience from both an academic and a business perspective. So it's great to have you on the show. And uh don't be a stranger, we'd love to have you back again at some point in the future. Happy to. Thank you very much, Lee. So we come to another uh conclusion of another episode of the Sterling Business Podcast. Uh today's guest was Dr. Lee Sparks, Professor of Retail Studies at the University. Uh so thank you, Lee, for uh for all your words of wisdom. And um until we have our next episode, uh take care and we'll speak again soon.