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Over the past 50 years, Cambridge has emerged as the UK’s leading technology hub. But can that success be repeated elsewhere, and how long might it last?

It is not always easy for a son to escape the shadow of his father, especially when the father in question is Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution has been described as “the single best idea anyone has ever had”.

But Darwin’s fifth son, Horace, deserves some acknowledgement in his own right, at least from the UK’s IT sector. According to Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, vice chancellor of the University of Cambridge, Horace Darwin and colleagues laid the blueprint for turning scientific breakthroughs into commercial technologies when they founded the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company in 1881.

That blueprint has been adopted and advanced in the Cambridge area to such an extent that the university city is now arguably the heart and the brain of the UK’s IT sector.

Admittedly, the potential that was suggested by the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company lay dormant for almost a century. It was only the adoption of the model by Cambridge graduates Tim Eiloart and David Southward in 1960 that “put the brains of Cambridge University at the disposal of the problems of British industry”, Borysiewicz told the recent Cambridge Phenomenon conference.

The result was Cambridge Consultants, a technology development and consultancy company that now employs more than 300 people across the globe.

Further impetus was added in the 1970s, when Trinity College founded the Cambridge Science Park to provide office and research space for budding technology companies. From those foundations, companies of global renown such as software maker Autonomy, which has a market cap of £3.6 billion, the £620 million wireless technology firm Cambridge Silicon Radio and the £4.8 billion chip designer ARM Holdings have since emerged.

Those industry heavyweights are today joined in the Cambridge cluster by diverse start-ups that range from Hypertag, a maker of RFID-like tagging devices to Emotion AI, a computer animation company, and Transversal, a customer support software maker.

The impact of the Cambridge cluster is felt in every IT department in the country today, according to Richard Holway, the chairman of analyst firm TechMarketView, and not just because technology from such providers as ARM and Autonomy has been so widely adopted.

Having a successful technology industry has a multitude of benefits for the country – not least in the tax revenues it brings in – says Holway. Vitally, it creates a healthy career path for computer science graduates, the steady stream of which is essential in ensuring that our enterprises have ready access to those business-critical skills. “There isn’t an IT director working today that would be here without those entry-level opportunities,” says Holway. And the more openings there are, the more likely it is that the brightest and best youngsters will see IT as a sound career choice.

Why Cambridge?

So why has the cluster in Cambridge survived and thrived while others, such as the Silicon Corridor, which sprang up alongside the M4, have withered on the vine?

“I don’t see that Autonomy could have started anywhere else [than Cambridge],” says Mike Lynch, the company’s CEO and founder.

Lynch’s own entrepreneurial spirit took root in his university digs. There, his roommate had what at the time was a most unusual hobby. “He was into computer programming, writing this obscure language, C, for the BBC Micro,” says Lynch. “It got me hooked.”

When he eventually decided to launch his own company, the availability of some basic services was critical to its early success. The ability to rent a single office room at St John’s Innovation Centre, for example, allowed the fledgling Autonomy to present an aura of professionalism.

“It’s pretty difficult for software start-ups to convince potential customers that it’s safe to go with them,” says Lynch. “We were lucky. Our room had a stock cupboard, on which we hung a sign saying ‘Authorised personnel only’. We simply told visitors that our army of software engineers was behind the door.”

Also helpful was a nurturing and optimistic environment, he recalls. “Naivety is important – it allows seedlings to develop, for people with ideas to create companies,” says Lynch. When you have experience, you know how difficult it is to create a successful business. “If we’d all had MBAs, we would probably not have [started Autonomy] at all,” he says.

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