The Cambridge Technopole: What next?

Cambridge Cleantech: An idea whose time has come?

2011-10-23T22:23:00.001+01:00

Last Friday saw the launch of 'Cambridge Cleantech' at the great new lecture hall at the redeveloped Cambridge campus of Anglia Ruskin University. The turnout was impressive: 300+ attendees at 07:30 in the morning is quite an achievement for any event. The success of this launch event - bringing together investors, entrepreneurs and academics - did seem to point to the notion that a network dedicated to clean tech in the Greater Cambridge (broadly defined) could be bang on the money. But why has this only happened now?

www.enecsys.com

There have been numerous 'green' related local and regional initiatives in the past but none has really managed to bring together the diverse geographic and sectoral interests to act as a voice for the wide range of cleantech organisations in the same way that OneNucleus has done for the life sciences and Cambridge Wireless has done for those commercialising wireless technologies.

www.breathingbuildings.com

This diversity of needs and interests may be one reason for the lack of a single voice for cleantech to date, coupled with the fact that there are so many other business networks into which cleantech, and cleantech-related companies have been able to fit.
Some prior attempts at bringing together 'green' companies have been more publicly-funded push activities, with limited private sector, business-driven pull, and hence lacked market traction.
There has also been the dilemma of the 'C-word'. While 'Cambridge' is a superb national and international brand, using it (even in its broader 'Greater Cambridge' version) to represent a region that stretches from Bedford to Ipswich, and King's Lynn to Harlow has, for some, stretched both the brand and the patience of those far from Cambridge.

http://green-tide.org/

Then there are also changes in the cleantech sector itself (which is not really a sector but rather a collection of technologies applied to deliver some specific benefit but minimise impact on the environment). This multi-faceted sector is increasing in maturity in terms of consumer uptake, investment readiness, and refinement of available business offerings. But there is still a long way to go in getting the best solutions to market to address the sustainability opportunities presented by the huge range of needs of individual and business consumers.
And this is why a network - leveraging the power of the Cambridge brand for regional benefit - that represents and lobbies on behalf of this diverse range of organisations, facilitates value-adding connections between these firms, and supports the development of its members is so timely and important.

Phenomena in Cambridge and Kyoto, and the need for a Japanese Hermann Hauser

2011-10-09T17:40:00.000+01:00

"We don't have a 'Kyoto Phenomenon' because we don't have a Japanese equivalent of Hermann Hauser". I heard this statement at a recent meeting in Japan attended by a small group of academics, entrepreneurs and investors, and it triggered the following thoughts.

There are, of course, numerous outstanding entrepreneurial role models in Japan, individuals who have driven major transformations in industries and defined whole new product categories. For example, Akio Morita of Sony (who co-founded the company and introduced the famous pre-cursor to the iPod, the Walkman), Masayoshi Son of Softbank (an outspoken multi-billionaire who built Softbank into one of the country's leading internet and mobile phone companies) and Tadashi Yanai of Uniqlo (another of Japan's richest men, who built a global clothes design and retailing empire).
Despite such notable successes as these (and others), commentators highlight the absence of a thriving startup culture - in part a result of the comparatively weak domestic VC industry - as a key reason for Japan's 'lost decades' (the period since the early 1990s during which Japan's economy has stagnated). But what about alternative models of recovery? Though there are plenty of good arguments that point to embedded structural problems with Japanese companies and their strategies, there are also quite a few that point to their ability to respond to and cope with change. Kyocera's growth from 3,000 to 60,000 employees up to and through the lost decades is an example. The strategy of Japanese firms in India is another one. But the role of Japanese entrepreneurs in stimulating economic recovery in Japan is, as Ben Goldacre would put it, 'a bit more complicated than that', and so this topic will be the subject of a longer post later in the year.

In the meantime, to find out why Hermann Hauser (and the numerous other successful role models) have been so important to the birth and growth of the Cambridge Phenomenon - and why the absence of a local version of him in clusters elsewhere is perceived as a handicap - come along and hear his views in person at this week's Cambridge Network meeting at Robinson College at 17:30 on12th October.

Hardware, software, monozukiri, and Cambridge

2011-10-02T07:42:00.000+01:00

Last week I went to a talk given at ITEC in Kyoto by Bob Cole from UC Berkeley on the topic of Japanese software. This triggered a number of thoughts relating to my last blog post on the topic of the role of manufacturing in innovative regions. Two key points relating to Bob Cole's talk were:

Japan's ICT and consumer electronics industries were built predominantly on innovative hardware solutions, supported by bespoke software. This hardware focus plays to, and helped build upon, Japanese strengths in designing and manufacturing precision goods (the term often used to describe this is monozukiri - the art of making physical things).
The world of ICT has moved to being much more software intensive. The recent activities of HP and IBM provide ample support for that point. Japanese companies have been losing competitiveness, and do not seem able to make the transition to a more software intensive approach (but caution is needed in terms of causality and correlation there).

During the talk, the question was asked of the Japanese technology managers in the room 'In your development activities, do you start with hardware then bring in software, or is it the other way round, or do you do both together?'. The response was ~80% for hardware first, software second. A lively discussion ensued, part of which focused on Japanese management structures where seniority rules. The older employees are more likely to be hardware specialists, and software will larger be the domain of younger - and hence more junior - engineers. As a result, hardware dominates. If this is the situation (and there are many other factors to consider before leaping too quickly to conclusions) then for Japan’s ICT firms to transform themselves, different approaches are needed. One idea put forward was for Japanese ICT firms to partner with (or buy) innovative start-ups and use these external organisations to stimulate internal change. This is possible, but research shows that getting very large, old, complex firms to partner with small, new, agile start-ups is very challenging. Also, partnering for collaboration is one thing; expecting culture change within the larger firm as a result of the partnership is a much bigger issue.

So, what's all this got to do with Cambridge? Cambridge has developed strong local strengths in software (Autonomy, RedGate, etc.) on the back of historical strengths in hardware (Acorn, Sinclair, etc). Cambridge firms have not lost their integration with the hardware side (see ARM, CSR, etc.) and this has been built in part upon collaborations with Japanese hardware firms). Going forward, it is interesting to see how new initiatives are seeking to build on some of these long standing Japanese connections. ideaSpace is building links with a business incubator in Japan (Innovation Jungle, based at the Advanced Scientific Technology Management (ASTeM) Institute in Kyoto). It will be interesting to see how this nacent partnership can help play to the strengths of both Cambridge and Kyoto (which is, by the way, the home of Nintendo – a pretty good example of an integrated and very successful hardware and software company).

Entrepreneurship, manufacturing, and things you can drop on your foot

2011-08-29T10:58:00.018+01:00

On a recent business trip to California, I met with some of my former students who are now entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley, predominantly working in consumer internet and mobile apps. These sectors are typified by low capital costs, rapid prototyping and customer engagement, flexible business models, scalability, and potentially (and frequently actual) significant returns to investors. But this success prompted thoughts of whether we could be doing more to support entrepreneurship based around creating value from tangible "things you can drop on your toes" as opposed to the more intangible worlds of software and services.

This opens a whole debate that is way above my pay grade. On the one hand there is the rational but complex debate on what manufacturing actually is, its role in an economy and its impact in growth. There is also the less rational debate about it being somehow 'better' to create value from 'real things'. This is an issue of great interest in Japan at the moment, where the culture of monozukuri (making things) underpinned the phenomenal post-war recovery, but which some believe now hinders Japan's ability to renew itself ("A Samurai would never write software" as one Japanese manager put it in a recent article on Japan in The Economist).

But if we put that debate to one side and take the view that there is a role for creating value from addressing customer needs through the provision of physical devices, then we should make sure that 'manufacturing' entrepreneurs have access to the resources they need to get their ideas to market. One of the most common needs is access to prototyping equipment, the cost of which is typically way beyond any individual inventor or start-up company. The provision of publicly accessible tools (a part of what academics sometimes grandly call 'industrial commons') can therefore be a key enabler for manufacturing entrepreneurs.

There are many examples of organisations providing access to such tools (e.g. for life sciences, the Babraham Technology Development Lab, and for advanced engineering, the Hethel Engineering Centre). These organisations typically combine public and private investment and leverage existing infrastructure to provide support to entrepreneurs. But there is still a need to provide advice, a place for experimentation, and a supportive community for those at the very earliest stages of the development of ideas. It was therefore very pleasing - during the same trip to California where almost everything seemed to be web and mobile focused - to meet with the CEO of Tech Shop in San Francisco. Tech Shop provides a great example of how tools can be provided to support manufacturing entrepreneurs at the very early stages of the development of business ideas. As the CEO put it: "We provide access to tools to help people accelerate their projects". This is not a contract R&D service; it is about providing access to tools and support to help people experiment, explore and develop their ideas. Examples of businesses that have been developed through Tech Shop included Square, Solumtech, DripTech, Clustered Systems and Embrace.

And this is why it is so exciting to see that the MakeSpace project is really gaining momentum in Cambridge, and is about to set up in its new home in - very appropriately - an old factory in the city centre.

Silicon Something: Necessary but not sufficient

2011-03-10T22:40:00.002Z

In late 2010, David Cameron unveiled plans to support the continued development of London's 'Silicon Roundabout' - the cluster of predominantly web-related start-ups that have grown up in east London - to help make it "one of the world's great technology centres" (wired.com). Following this announcement, The Economist noted that: "Measured by the concentration of technology firms and the availability of generous and informed investors, California’s Silicon Valley is still in a league of its own. But in the second division of hubs, this chunk of east London is near the top, along with the likes of Boston and Tel Aviv. That its growth took place so quickly, and during a recession, is remarkable enough: the high-tech zone in Cambridge has taken decades to evolve. But the fact that Silicon Roundabout also emerged without government support, or even direct links with universities, should pique the interest of countries that have tried to cultivate technology hubs without the same success" (economist.com).

This can be seen as an interesting illustration of the role of innovation journalism and the use of metaphors in focusing attention onto a particular region and helping attract resources to support growth. This effect was described in an interesting article by Uskali and Nordfors on the role of innovation journalism in developing regional innovation ecosystems such as Silicon Valley (tweeted by Sherry Coutu of, among many other things, Silicon Valley Comes to Cambridge) . The key conclusion of the article is that innovation journalism: "[..] is essential in innovation economies, since a) an innovation is the introduction of something new b) it is difficult to discuss new things if there is no common language for them and c) journalism is a key actor for introducing common language for innovations, so that they may be discussed. " (Uskali and Nordfors, 2007).

For Cambridge, there have been two key 'labelling moments'. The first was the publication of the "Cambridge Phenomenon" report in 1985 by Segal, Quince and Partners (now SQW). The second was the 1998 article in the New York Times entitled "In Old England a Silicon Fen: Cambridge as a High-Tech Outpost". Both the 'Cambridge Phenomenon' and 'Silicon Fen' labels have proved remarkably effective at providing a hook onto which numerous innovation-related news stories can be neatly hung which, in turn, help attract the interest of policymakers, investors, and entrepreneurs.

Innovation journalism seems to play an important role in the development of a regional cluster, and the catchy labels or metaphors may provide a useful focal point onto which the interest of investors and entrepreneurs can be targeted. But the wonderful list of 'Silicons' published at http://tbtf.com/siliconia.html show that a memorable name may be necessary but is not sufficient to ensure the development of a great technology centre.

Help wanted: Cambridge Museum of Technology and Cambridge Phenomenon

2011-02-23T17:44:00.007Z

Posting from Dr Peter Long, Cambridge University Engineering Department:

The Cambridge Museum of Technology is using the Science Festival to put on an initial exhibition about the High Technology Industries of Cambridge. The museum plans to keep the exhibition open during the summer period and to continually develop the exhibits with feedback/input from visitors and interested parties during the period.

The initial displays will hopefully include displays, posters and exhibits (photos, documents, products, bits of tech, etc), about:

1) The industries that were active around Cambridge in the 40s, 50s 60s which acted as a foundation of the subsequent technological boom and source of skilled staff;

2) The consultancies, large and small that have been built up in the Cambridge area;

3) Computer related industries, including those in the microcomputer boom;

4) Computer games industry;

5) Biotechnology;

6) Inkjet printing;

7) Computer Aided Design (CAD);

8) Geographic Information Systems (GIS);

.. and many others.

If you were part of the recent industrial growth of Cambridge either as an inventor/employee/owner/investor, the museum would be very interested to hear from you. In the first instance, please can you email Dr Peter Long (pjgl2@eng.cam.ac.uk) to let him know what you might be able to lend the museum.

With thanks in advance for any help you might be able to provide.

If you know anyone who may also be interested in loaning/donating information/exhibits or assisting in the development of the exhibition, please point them to this page.

--
Peter J G Long PhD
Senior Design Engineer
Cambridge-MIT Engineering Exchange Coordinator

Cambridge University Engineering Department
Trumpington Street
Cambridge CB2 1PZ

Tel 44 -(0) 1223 -332779

Tech Syndrome - The Cambridge and/or European Disease?

2010-12-16T09:09:00.003Z

Viewpoint from Martin Rigby, CEO of psonar and author of Candid Capital blog.

Why is it that Cambridge, and even Europe as a whole, still doesn't really get the idea of market-led innovation?

Psonar, the cloud music service of which I'm co-founder, was lucky enough to be selected for the Discovering Start-ups event run in Cambridge last week. The panel of judges was impressive with a cross-section of Europe's VC, telecoms and tech cluster elite. The 22 businesses showcased were of varying degrees of maturity across a range of technologies. It was a well-run event and we had three approaches from potential investors.

What struck me however, when I saw the businesses selected as the winners, was the focus on the cleverness of technology rather than the market vision of those businesses. Innovative technology is laudable, but only where it is part of, and subordinate to, a business model that is driven by market opportunity. If the cleverness of the solution, rather than its ability to capitalise on an attractive and profitable commercial opportunity, is seen as the most important characterictic then the person making that judgement is suffering from "Tech Syndrome". It seems to me that with the notable exception of Cambridge Temperature Concepts and, to a lesser extent, Magic Solver, the winners showed that the judges were suffering from Tech Syndrome - or maybe there wasn't any choice.

So why is this? At the excellent celebratory dinner in the hall at Newnham College, the guest speaker was Laurence John, CEO of the Amadeus Seed Fund. Laurence is an enthusiast for what he does and always a pleasure to listen to. He was at pains to emphasise his belief that Cambridge is too much in love with technology and not focused enough on applications. To illustrate this, he suggested, for example, that new applications exploiting the capability of cameras that "know what they are looking at" would be the kind of innovation that start-ups should be pursuing instead of simply smaller, better, cheaper or higher performance devices themselves.

While I agree that focussing on the application is better than focussing on the technology, really valuable innovation has to make the extra leap to being market-driven. Taking the same example as Laurence - cameras that know what they are looking at - why is it useful or beneficial to consumers or businesses to have devices with this capability? Even if there are needs that can be met by this application (which I would argue is really an assembly of technologies) are those needs part of one or more markets which a business can address coherently, acquiring the knowledge and experience to exploit them fully and profitably. Or is it really no more than clever technology, apparently productised but, in reality, in search of a profitable market opportunity?

I'd contrast this love of technology, of gizmos, to the approach of the really successful US venture funds. Take Menlo Ventures for example:

"At Menlo Ventures, we invest in entrepreneurs that Think Big. We seek passionate teams with big ideas that can disrupt existing industries or create entirely new markets. Our track record over the past 32 years of helping companies achieve market leadership through great strategy and great execution speaks for itself...".

Of if you look at Sequoia Capital's investment criteria, the word technology, or even application, isn't mentioned once.

Welcome to the world of "Think Big Syndrome"!

12 December 2010

Cambridge: 10 years on .. but how much further forward?

2010-11-02T23:10:00.016Z

The Cambridge Phenomenon conference provided an opportunity to reflect upon the development of Cambridge over the past 50 years, but two smaller events triggered an interesting question relating to more recent history. The first event was a college dinner hosted for a visitor from mainland Europe. At the end of the dinner, discussion turned to the European approach and attitudes to entrepreneurship. The views expressed by those present were varied but included:

On European entrepreneurs: "We lack the relentless, obsessive focus on building high growth, market leading businesses. We just don't have the ambition and we don't work hard enough."
On competition from China: "While growth and scale of activities in China is immensely impressive, this has been largely focused on developing production and, more recently, R&D capability. Europe needs to recognise that it has the capabilities that allow us to compete on a different basis."
On the Cambridge cluster: "We may have many of the features of a Silicon Valley-type innovation ecosystem, but we are still not completely 'getting it'."

These views (which do not reflect my own) are very similar to those being expressed back at the end of the last millenium when there was increasing interest in supporting entrepreneurship as a means of driving economic growth. If these issues matter, and given we've had 10 years of significant efforts focused on promoting entrepreneurship, are we any closer to addressing them?

The second event was a meeting of some organisations that have been involved in supporting high-tech businesses in Cambridge over the last 10 years. I compared the minutes of that meeting with those of a meeting of the same group of 10 years ago. Again, most of the issues and concerns discussed were the same as they had been a decade earlier.

A question prompted by these two events is: What has really been achieved in the past 10 years?

Clearly, much has been achieved. The volume of activities focused upon supporting entrepreneurship and innovation is measurably higher (e.g. mentoring, angel investment - both quality and quantity, education, events, incubation, etc), and some of the economic outcomes are very impressive (e.g. number of US$bn-valued firms, number of firms dominating their chosen markets, jobs created, student interest in entrepreneurship, volume of license income generated from IP, etc). But, in these resource-constrained times, now might be a good time to reflect on the balance between what we are doing and what we are achieving so that in ten years from now we are not forced to point to the same concerns again and say 'We really must do something about that'.

Makespace - very cool & much needed in Cambridge

2010-08-20T14:25:00.004+01:00

Last night's Makespace meetup at the Hauser Forum was fun, informative, and highlighted a key gap in Cambridge innovation ecosystem (i.e. where can people in Cambridge who want to make stuff go to meet with similar-minded people, and get their hands on the tools and support they need to make their ideas a reality?) .. and pointed the way to how this gap could filled.

You can read more about the event, view the pictures and see the comments made by attendees at the Makespace meetup site, but for me the event was exciting because:

It showcased examples of amazing technical ingenuity using tiny budgets (Cambridge University Space Flight - the students who put teddy bears in space)
It made the link to the importance of prototyping and demonstrators in getting ideas converted into real products (Cambridge Consultants work on technology demonstrators and A1 Technologies 3D printing technologies)
It reminded us that sometimes very clever people - with excellent technical skills - can still make big mistakes (Sinclair C5)

A big vote of thanks should go to Simon Ford and Jonny Austin for getting this initiative going, and we should all look for ways to help get further activities (such as a FabLab in Cambridge) resourced.

What does 'open innovation' mean for the Cambridge high tech cluster?

2010-05-03T07:37:00.010+01:00

Cambridge has been noted for its ability to 'punch above its weight'. Despite the cluster being relatively small (the population of the city being only around 100,000), it has produced firms that lead global markets in - amongst others - areas such as microprocessors for mobile devices (ARM), industrial inkjet printing (Domino Printing Sciences) and meaning based computing (Autonomy).

Part of the reason why Cambridge firms can achieve global scale and take on much larger rivals is through the effective use of various forms of collaborations, ecosystem building or 'open innovation'. Open innovation describes the ways in which companies can create value through innovating in partnership with other organisations. The topic is attracting high levels of interest from policymakers, consultants, multinational corporations and academics. It is being hailed by some as the 'new way' to improve companies' abilities to innovate, accelerate regional economic recovery, attract investment and link with the science base. But is it really anything new? Is there any evidence that it really works? What does it mean for start-ups, medium-sized firms and multinationals in and around Cambridge? What can be learned from the experience of those Cambridge firms that have implemented open innovation strategies?

Building on the outputs of recently completed research, a new project will shortly be started at the Institute for Manufacturing which will examine the different strategies used by Cambridge firms in implementing open innovation, and contrasting this with approaches used elsewhere. As part of this new research, a talk will be held on the 13th May to review and prompt discussion on the background, current practice, and implications for future of the Cambridge high tech cluster of the emerging (or perhaps very old) phenomenon of 'open innovation'. For more information on this talk and to register, see the IfM's events page.

TEDxCam .. well worth the wait

2010-04-18T21:54:00.004+01:00

For anyone who knows and enjoys TED talks, it had been a bit of a mystery why a TEDx event had not been organised in Cambridge. Thanks to the efforts of Cong Cong Bo and Dawson King (plus their team and sponsors), on Saturday 17th April, TED did come to Cambridge. And it was well worth the wait. There's no point my attempting to summarise the talks (which will be much better done elsewhere) but a few points are particularly worthy of note:

It was great to see a large community of 'new' faces at a networking event in Cambridge. Thanks to many factors (the brand pull of TED, the wonderful national TEDxCam Young Fellows programme, etc) the majority of the people attending seemed to be more diverse in age, background and outlook when compared with the 'usual' Cambridge cluster network attendees - though it was good to see so many of the regulars in attendance too.
TED is known for its focus on innovative ideas. But it was great to see that so many of the talks were not just about what 'might be' but also about ideas that were being implemented now (such as improved cancer screening, advances in cybernetics, and changes in the UK libel laws).
TEDxCam also brought with it a sense of US-style optimism and energy .. a sense that change for the better can be achieved if we all just get on with it. This was perhaps best summarised by the TED talk (tellingly selected as the TEDxCam team's favourite) from Richard St John shown via video at the end of the event.
Bruno Giussani (European director of TED conferences) also reminded the audience of what can be achieved with enthusiastic champions, supportive sponsors, and a great, open infrastructure. The TEDx events have exceeded expectations in both the numbers of events being organised and the diversity of franchisees. It is well worth taking a look at the TEDx site.

Well done TEDxCam team and sponsors .. and looking forward to more events like that in Cambridge.

Resources on cluster development

2010-01-28T00:53:00.008Z

As part of the preparation for a talk at the Japanese Cluster Conference 2010, I came across several interesting websites providing data on policies to support cluster formation, cluster / open innovation activities, and sites with slightly more tenuous - but potentially relevant - content. In case these might be of interest to others, I have grouped links to them below. Also the slides used at the conference can be downloaded from here.

Policies for clusters:
UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills cluster strategy
French Pôles de Compétitivité
European Commission's view on the importance of 'Powerful Clusters'

Everyone wants to be Silicon Valley
Examples of 'Silicon + {geographic feature}'

Open innovation
IfM report on 'How to implement open innovation'
Examples of idea submission websites: P&G and 3M
Examples of open innovation intermediaries: Innocentive and NineSigma.

Corporate R&D and clusters
Examples of companies locating innovation activities within clusters: Nokia and Microsoft
Examples of companies seeking to develop clusters around their R&D facilities: Unilever@Colworth and Philips@Eindhoven

Examples of cluster strategies
Local = Cambridge; Regional = East of England Enterprise Hubs; Cross-border = Eindhoven-Leuven-Aachen Triangle (ELAT)

Networks within the Cambridge cluster
Cambridge Network
ERBI
University of Cambridge Enterprise Network

What's the future for Silicon Fen?

2009-11-13T21:23:00.009Z

This article appeared in the 'finalword' section of Cambridge Business magazine, Q4, 2009

Tim Minshall, Institute for Manufacturing and St John's Innovation Centre

Trying to work out how the high-tech cluster in Cambridge is performing is very frustrating. You end up having a lot of sympathy for Harry S Truman’s famous quote: “Give me a one-handed economist! All my economists say, 'on the one hand...on the other”. You get a flavour of this scanning headlines over recent months: “Abcam reaches new heights with record interims”, “Bankruptcy levels reach record high [..]”, “Recession is over, let's get back to business”, "3i to shut Cambridge office", "University of Cambridge portfolio companies raise more than £30 million [..]", “Life sciences cluster takes further blow”, and so on.

Whatever the often contradictory headlines say, the Technopole – or ‘Silicon Fen’ – seems to be reaching an important point in its evolution. Since the 1970s, Cambridge has been one of the leaders in the development of support for new technology-based ventures. It has not been the biggest, or the most successful (Cambridge is, as some have observed, a seagull compared to Silicon Valley’s Jumbo Jet), but it has created a particular model of value creation that has delivered significant value to the UK economy and to global investors.

However, almost every developed nation has recognised the potential economic benefits of technology-based entrepreneurship and has sought to create their own version of Silicon Valley. The result is that Cambridge has found it harder to attract international investment, and domestically there has been rapid growth in regional competition. In addition three other factors bring in to focus the challenges – and opportunities – facing Cambridge: the effect of the global economic downturn; the reaching of major milestones for key Cambridge organisations; and changes in several key organisations within the cluster coupled with the launch of many new initiatives.

The credit crunch has clearly had a significant impact on Cambridge companies, but this impact has both a negative and positive side. For some companies, the financial crisis resulted in problems accessing debt and equity finance, and in much harsher market conditions as customers reined-in their spending. However, other companies have found opportunities to grow in the downturn – such as the enterprise search company Autonomy – and yet others have been able to raise significant investment – such as Light Blue Optics. The downturn has also led to the departure of some big names from Cambridge such as Kodak, but also seen the arrival of new ones in the shape of electronics giant Philips which opened a research centre in the city.

Cambridge is the birthplace of many remarkable organisations that have played key roles in the Cambridge Phenomenon. Some of these organisations are approaching significant milestones, such as Cambridge Consultants (a pioneer in the field of technology and innovation consultancy) approaching its 50th birthday, and the Cambridge Science Park (at the vanguard of science park developments since the 1970s) its 40th. But how do we build upon the achievements of these and similar organisations? Which organisations will be the ones to raise Cambridge’s game to the next level and keep us at the forefront of activities to create and capture value from innovation?

As well as remarkable organisations, Cambridge has many outstanding individuals. What has been interesting to observe is the number of recent leadership handovers at key organisations including the Cambridge Network, ERBI and St John’s Innovation Centre. There has also been a regular sprouting of new, exciting initiatives such as the Hauser Forum, Women 4 Technology, and Cambridge Tech Demo nights.

Taking all of these issues together, Cambridge has some great opportunities ahead but must also overcome some substantial challenges. But which of these we should address, and how, is completely up in the air. I believe there are three areas where work is needed

First of all, we need to be better at reaching out internationally. Cambridge has a golden opportunity to help multinational corporations implement the increasingly popular strategy of ‘open innovation’ (i.e., combining internal and external ideas to create new value). It is fantastic to see companies such as Philips, Nokia and Unilever explicitly linking their open innovation strategies to activities at Cambridge. But we must help such firms ensure that they really benefit from being in Cambridge. And it’s not easy, as the departure of Kodak shows.

Secondly, there is great potential to do more to link activities and capabilities within Cambridge to those across the region to deliver value to new and existing businesses. The establishment of the Hauser Forum at West Cambridge as an EEDA-funded Regional Centre for Enterprise and Open Innovation, and the development of the Regional Technopole activities under the stewardship of Walter Herriot will both help support more regional collaborations. But creating and capturing value from innovation activities at a regional level brings its own challenges. Regional activities need to focus on complementarity rather than competition. Without this, there is a risk of duplication of effort and a dilution of resources across too many similar initiatives. Also, sharing experience and transferring skills between centres within the region takes time, money and sustained effort.

Finally, with so much happening within Cambridge, there is a real risk of initiatives treading on each other’s toes, and opportunities falling between gaps. Now here is a real challenge: Cambridge has, thankfully, never done ‘command and control’. Much of its strength is the result of highly individualistic, anti-authoritarian, entrepreneurial behaviour, and we don’t want to lose that. But we do need to improve internal links. As I write this, I am in Japan hearing how Japanese science cities (yes, cities, not parks) struggle to build links and foster collaborations to support the ‘soft’ infrastructure of innovation. Cambridge is in many ways well ahead of the game with its active business networking, free flow of students and researchers between university departments and companies, and numerous business support activities. But there is definitely more that could be done.

If we could build upon some of the excellent networks and collaborations that are already in place, and do even more to integrate new and old, technology and arts, university and business, it could really make a difference. One senior manager of a multinational highlighted this gap. He pointed out that while his company had benefitted from many of the networks and collaborations in Cambridge, he felt it was still very fragmented and this was likely to impact future investments. As he put it “It’s simple: if you want to attract more companies like us, you’ve got to join things up better!”.

Cambridge has weathered storms before. It could be that this storm is actually the trigger for the acceleration of the development of Cambridge as a globally leading source of solutions to tomorrow’s problems.

How to track new activities in the Technopole?

2009-10-26T09:39:00.001Z

Viewpoint from Tim Minshall, Institute for Manufacturing and St John's Innovation Centre.

"So, which innovation activities should we get involved in?"

I asked a manager of one of the large firms that have moved to Cambridge as part of an 'open innovation' strategy whether he thought his organisation was sufficiently engaged with the numerous entrepreneurship and innovation activities within the cluster. He turned the question back to me by asking me which ones I thought they ought to be involved in. I started listing the obvious long-standing ones (such as Cambridge Network events, CfEL Enterprise Tuesday, etc) and some of the newer high profile ones (such as Silicon Valley Comes to Cambridge) but it occured to me that there are proably many more events and activities that I didn't know about. Contacting a few of my younger (i.e, those in their 20s and 30s) colleagues revealed, to my shame, a plethora of initiatives of which I was either completely unaware or only dimly aware. They highlighted activities including Cambridge Geek Day, Cambridge Tech Meetup, Super-Happy Dev Club, Women 4 Technology, BarCamp, Refresh Cambridge, Business Leaders' Network, beginspace, Cambridge Leaders' Academy, and more.

It was interesting to note who are running these events and activities. Some are 'old' organisations delivering new things, some are run by people who have been around Cambridge for a while and are now trying new things, and some are organised by people who are new to Cambridge and who see a gap in current provison of support and networking.

But, this left me with two simple questions: How can anyone in Cambridge keep track of all these new activities? How do you work out which ones are useful for what purpose? I am in the processs of updating the Cambridge Technopole website and report and so that it gives a more up-to-date reflection of what is going on within the cluster. Any comments or ideas on how to track what is going on would be most welcome ...

The Lost Generation? Part 2

2009-10-15T09:38:00.002+01:00

Viewpoint from Amy Mokady, Strategy Consultant, Director of i-Teams)

Recently I have found myself stating to a lot of people that Cambridge has the most talented and highly-qualified pool of unemployed that I have ever seen. The listener usually laughs and agrees when I explain that these are the mothers of young children who used to have high-flying careers, and who in many cases never return to full-time work.

They are the people like me, women who have been brought up and trained to do demanding jobs, and who have built successful careers pre-children, who loved working and saw their job as a key part of who they were. Most of us never expected to stop, but having stopped many expect never to go back. The reasons and circumstances are all different and varied. A few examples. Women who do return to work part-time only to leave because they "never see their children". Women who choose to return to work at a more junior level so that they can be genuinely part-time and not feel the responsibility to fight fires at other times. Women who return to work successfully part-time at their existing employer, only to discover how limited their options are when they look for a new part-time role elsewhere. And the counter example, which is fortunately now very well-accepted - women who return to work full-time leaving their partner to be the non-worker and primary parent.

This is not intended to be a tale of doom and gloom. Many parents find entirely new careers as a result, often in creative customer-facing businesses, and often self-employed. Others become school governors, NCT counsellors, and much-needed volunteers. In Cambridge two of our largest employers, Cambridge University and Addenbrookes, both have large numbers of part-time workers, and are able to manage this very successfully. And yet, even in this city, there are many many highly-skilled and experienced women who would love to work, if only the work could fit comfortably with their family responsibilities. The few organisations I know that are willing to work in this way are rewarded with loyal and talented staff, and frequently find it beneficial that those staff are working unusual hours such as evenings and weekends.

So this is a question and a plea. Why are commercial businesses, especially high-tech and high-growth businesses, not looking to make use of this incredibly-valuable resource? Why can we not develop management methods which allow staff to work more flexibly, both in terms of physical locations and times of working? With the internet and mobile phones, the technology is there. What seems to be lacking is the will and the motivation.

The Lost Generation? Part 1

2009-10-08T16:56:00.003+01:00

Viewpoint from Amy Mokady, Strategy Consultant, Director of i-Teams

As the students returned en masse to Cambridge University this week, the recent media coverage of a "Lost Generation" of students comes to mind. Are these students doomed to a lifetime blighted by a long unproductive search for their first job in the midst of a recession? Or are they still the world's Bright Young Things who will leave Cambridge without a second glance and head off to glittering careers in bigger, shinier places? In particular, will any of them stay and work here in Cambridge after they graduate, and help us maintain and invigorate the Cambridge Cluster.

Only time will tell, but in recent years the most common beliefs that I have heard stated are that graduates are only interested in going to work in the City, and that no-one stays in Cambridge on graduation because house prices are too high. Followed by the caveat that we clearly cannot address either of those problems so cannot do anything to retain more students on graduation, and ignoring the obvious contradiction between the two views (surely London's house prices are still higher than Cambridge's).

The situation is one that matters for the Cluster's mid-term future. So far the Cambridge Cluster has thrived on its culture of a succession of new start-ups, and people usually found new businesses in the place that they live or work already, with people that they already know. If our students view Cambridge only as a University, and not as a place to do business, then as a community we are wasting one of our most valuable sources of intellectual capital.

With this in mind, I set up a discussion group of recent graduates (both BAs and PhDs) to try to find out what was really going on. The results proved to be both interesting and helpful.

Firstly, we quickly erased the house price argument. All the people in the discussion had found a job first, and only then started to think about where they might live, and how much it might cost. Of more concern was where their friends would be planning to live and work, since generally they had moved into some form of shared housing.

Secondly, and more concerningly, none of them had actually intended to work in Cambridge after graduation, but had generally assumed that they would end up working in London. They had no visibility or exposure to the city outside the University, nor any interest in working here. Those that had accepted jobs in Cambridge had usually fallen into them accidentally, or had personal reasons for wanting to stay here. Their fellow graduates did not see Cambridge as somewhere to work, just as somewhere that they studied.

In our current highly mobile world, it is unlikely that any new graduates will settle in one location and stay there for their whole careers. If they stay in Cambridge after graduation, they may then move to London or New York or Berlin for their second or third job. If they leave Cambridge for their first job, then similarly they might well come back one day. However, they are unlikely to come back if they know nothing about the dynamism and excitement of Cambridge as a place to work, and the easiest time to make them aware of this must be while they are still here.

Fortunately this is a problem that can be solved, and will hopefully be a small step towards preserving the Technopole's long-term dynamism and growth. The EPSRC has sponsored a new group of 'Enterprise College Reps', undergraduates who will be tasked with telling their college compatriots about the Enterprise activities available to them, and also with forging closer links between the student community and local businesses. The first such College Reps are being recruited this week. Watch this space...

Convergence? Edges coming together in Cambridge......

2009-09-14T01:41:00.004+01:00

Viewpoint from Juliette Morgan, Cluster Development Consultant

At dinner the other night, I was struck by a comment from an über-connected Cambridgian.....who posed the question: 'Why is it that all the people at the Enterprise Tuesday lecture are not the same people at the sustainability lectures? Are the innovators not interested in the future of the planet?'. Now those are pretty good questions, but even more so when you consider that there are whole communities of ‘creatives’ in this city who also are not attending either of those forums. The dinner conversation moved on to talk about silos, distributed conversations, etc.

Yet it's pretty flippin' interesting then when a University of Cambridge professor (Nicola Clayton) has been working with the Rambert Ballet company to inspire a ballet based on the work of Charles Darwin. More so, when ballet companies are entitling their work as E=MC2. The creatives are looking to science for inspiration, but are the technologists/sciences looking to the creatives?

If innovation happens at the edges or overlaps, then surely we should be acting to cross-pollinate creatives, with tech, with sustainability. That means as individuals we have to step out of our own silos and attend things for the good of ourselves and the good of the city. Take Paul Smith's Cam Creative's group - how interesting to cross pollinate them with i-teams or CUE, or better still Cam Tech Demo night (probably the coolest event in town these days, which it took an outsider to start!). Apple does this brilliantly - excellent software coupled with excellent product design and marketing. By definition, great companies need marketing and design to be able to touch consumers by reaching them with a great products made by the technologists. So we need to get these groups together.

It was also said that creatives find picturing the future much easier than technologists. The upshot is that we need them on the team, with their fresh perspectives, ability to make us question, and ability to communicate complex ideas.

And frankly, it would just be more interesting. We're a small city, and finding these people and groups won't be hard. There doesn't need to be some big initiative - just a few people inviting arty people to tech demo nights and vice versa. How much more interesting would it be to hot-house start-ups in artists' studios to form a culture of creativity and competitiveness. After all, a huge proportion of UK economic output comes from the arts, and frankly, we need to sort the planet so if Cambridge is a microcosm of that, then we should be overlapping these groups and interests.

There are lots of publicly funded initiatives in this city to promote enterprise, but I think the model needs a shake up. Lets chuck artists, video makers, digital media guys, tech teams and eco entrepreneurs in the same space to do something together in an informal way to stimulate each other in whatever realm they are working on......this isn't new. Singapore was a small island state thirty years ago with a mission to become a world class innovation cluster. Through planning it is putting its artist quarter next to its digital media quarter, which is beside IT and Healthcare. Now I'm not suggesting that Cambridge is a small island state, but life isn't disconnected anymore, so nor should Cambridge be. We need to start overlapping at the edges, which in reality is just people going out of their way to learn more and network differently.

I'm looking forward to being invited to whoever puts on the event that has Nicholas Juett (Cambridge artist) discussing with Nokia how he uses phone technology to make his art, and teach us all to look at the world from a new perspective.

What future for young companies?

2009-09-04T04:54:00.007+01:00

Viewpoint from Dr Anne Dobrée, Investment Business Manager, Cambridge Enterprise Seed Funds

With the selling of 3i’s portfolio and much depression in the venture capital industry one has to ask how young companies are going to raise that critical seed capital. Although our portfolio companies are still successful at raising follow-on funding – we have a great x45 leverage that we like to quote as much as possible – it is the seed and pre-A round finance that is proving so difficult to find. With University Challenge Funds almost fully invested, longer and longer timescales till exit, and fewer and fewer early stage VCs it is increasingly left to angels to fill the gap. But as we know, funding a high cost, long timescale technology start-up is not always the right investment for an angel since they will have to follow significantly to avoid being crushed by preference rights in later rounds.

There’s a rainbow outside my window as I write this (seriously!) but unfortunately no pot of gold. Although the University of Cambridge is raising a donated fund to support fledgling companies, not everyone can use this approach. Unless some of the new UK Innovation Investment Fund finds its way to very early stage start-ups, life for the high technology start-up is going to be very difficult indeed.

How do we monitor the health of the Technopole?

2009-08-18T20:50:00.010+01:00

Following the takeover of Library House by Dow Jones, it is not clear whether or not there will be any further Cambridge Cluster Reports. These reports provided one very helpful indication of the absolute and relative health of the Technopole, with a particular focus on VC-backed (and VC-backable) innovation-based firms. If these annual reports are no longer going to be produced, what other sources of data are there on the Technopole? There are several other sources of metrics on the health of the Technopole, but none provide a complete and 'live' picture. Examples available include:

Cambridge Index – monitoring publicly quoted firms in the Technopole.
GCP Annual Review – monitoring the sub-region's economy, people and places.
County Council Annual Reviews - county level economic data.
Insight East – regional level economic data.
Level of activity of Cambridge Enterprise - data on technology transfer from the University of Cambridge.
Commercial lettings - regional reports such as those provided by Savills.

There are also several externally captured sources of data on the Technopole providing sometimes useful comparative data (though some of these external groups do sometimes choose rather strange indicators resulting in the Cambridge Technopole's performance either being over-inflated or overlooked).

There could be real value for policymakers if we could identify what metrics are useful, how to capture them, and working out a way to feed them into some sort of live ‘Technopole Dashboard’. Maybe most of the needed metrics are already out there. If anyone has views on what the most appropriate metrics are, the best source of them, and how we could develop this 'dynamic dashboard' your ideas would be most welcome.

Welcome to the Cambridge Technopole Blog

2009-08-06T21:38:00.008+01:00

The Cambridge high tech cluster seems to have reached an important juncture in its development. Recent news headlines provide a flavour of struggles, resilience and on-going renewal of the cluster:

Several factors - some internal, some external - are likely to have an impact the future success of the cluster. Externally, the credit crunch is impacting investment into high tech start-ups and constraining the spend of their customers. Internally, the 'founding fathers' of the Cambridge Phenomenon (the key individuals who, by their actions, have 'set the tone' for the way Cambridge operates) are now passing the baton to a new generation of business leaders to put their mark on the next stage of development of the cluster. But what will be the long term impact for Cambridge of the credit crunch? How will the new generation of entrepreneurs and investors rise to the challenge of ensuring Cambridge emerges from this downturn stronger and better able to weather future storms?
What factors will influence the development of the cluster in the short and long term is not clear, but this is a critical juncture for the on-going development of the cluster. In this blog in the coming months we are going to capture, share and discuss some of the diverse viewpoints relating to these challenges and opportunities.