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Innovation Champions Network:The Cambridge Cluster Description

Alan Barrelalan.barrel@libraryhouse.net2nd April 2004www.innovation-champions-network.orgArabellastr. 1781925 - München

Chapter 1

Cambridge

1.1 Introduction

Summary

Cambridge is situated in the East of England, an ancient seat of learn-ing within a region historically known for farming, fishing and as thefirst centre in Britain of the wool industry and the leather goods in-dustry. Cambridge is 56 miles north east of London and is now animportant geographical location between the industrial West Midlandsof England and the East Coast ports. The industrial structure of the region has changed dramatically over the centuries. Thetford in Norfolk - north of Cambridge was thefirst great centre of the wool trade in Britain - in medieval times. This was before Birmingham, now Britain’s “Second City” (after London) ex-isted. The wool trade migrated to the north west of England in the19th Century, during the first Industrial Revolution - when the new technology of the day - the mechanised approaches to wool process-ing worked best in the damp environment of Manchester and the sur-rounding districts. The fishing industry has declined - less than 100fishermen now cast their nets along the protracted coastline of the re-gion, in the North Sea. Leather goods, especially footwear, moved north west into the West Midlands Region in the early part of the 20th Cen-tury. Farming and agriculture in general - including bio-agricultureremain in place, but whereas there was traditionally, apart from somelight engineering in the sub-region in earlier times, little industrial and business activity, the sub-region has become one of the liveliest “New Economy”regions in Europe during the last forty years - with signifi-cant and rapid progress towards a technology based industrial econ-omy -based on the cluster development, which has accelerated since1980. The latest economic data shows GDP per capita in the sub-regiongrowing 6.5% during a period when the UK economy grew a little above3% and the US Economy by 3.8%. During the same period,the Cam- bridge sub-region grew the jobs base by 80% as UK jobs grew by 16%.1

Chapter 1. Cambridge

Hi-tech jobs reached 50,000 within the total job base of 360,000.Cambridge University has played a pivotal role in the transfor-mation of the region, the city and the surrounding area from a me-dieval seat of learning to a great educational centre and wealth creat-ing knowledge based business centre - a transformation that has takenmore than 40 years and has been largely “bottom up”- a result of build-ing communities of "common purpose" - and matching the aspirations with achievements, rather than through “top down” government policy,intervention or funding. The sense of common purpose - of integration and coherence, theculture change which has been evidenced have been as important asthe superb science base available in Cambridge University, the intel-lectual capital of academics and business people and the development of support structures to enable the formation and sustenance of many new companies. Two examples of expression of what it takes to grow a sustainable hi-tech cluster are shown in the lecture presentation“Emerging Biotechnology Clusters” (see [Sai99, Bar03]). Cambridgehas most of the necessary characteristics. The real formation of the current cluster began in 1960, whena spin-out from Cambridge University - Cambridge Consultants Ltd.gave birth to a family of “technology providers” - and the cluster grew from there. 350 Technology Companies by 1985 (see [Par85]), 2,000 by the year 2000 (see [Par00]). 3,500 by 2003 (see [Bea03]).

The University

Cambridge University is pre-eminent in the World as one of the great-est centres of learning, research and innovation. Some of the great discoveries made in Cambridge University can be seen by visiting theuniversity website

www.cam.ac.uk

. The university boasts more NobelLaureates than any other University - 80 have been honoured.However, traditionally, the university saw its role as a two streamactivity - teaching and research. Many of the great inventions and dis-coveries therefore were not exploited to the advantage of the university or the people of Cambridge. Many were commercially exploited over-seas, most notably in USA. The institutional change needed to convert the university as a whole to the thinking of UK Government whichhas prevailed for the last few decades - that universities have a “thirdstream”of activities to pursue - “commercialisationof intellectual prop-erty”and “new business creation”- has been a struggle for Cambridgeas for all leading UK universities. Cultural change in educational insti-tutions founded 800 years ago - as was Cambridge (founded in 1209), with its very special college-based system, was never likely to be easy or fast. That it has changed so radically is itself astonishing and a great credit to leadership in the University and the local community over a period of 30-40 years.

1.1. Introduction

2nd April 2004