Is Cambridge the UK’s most profitable town?
Cambridge has become a breeding ground for billion-pound businesses, spurred on by a special tradition outlined by generosity and ‘dogged determination’ 
 
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Property to 1 of the world’s best universities, lovely surroundings and some of the best illustrations of Gothic architecture, Cambridge has prolonged experienced a status as one particular of the UK’s most-loved towns.
Its attraction and laidback pace attraction to folks hunting for both a good good quality of existence and an location with thrilling job opportunities.
When compared to London, the home of several electronic start off-ups, Cambridge has remained reasonably beneath the radar, quietly allowing the money seize the consideration when it arrives to tech innovation.
But Cambridge has become the city to observe. The team of engineering and bioscience businesses in the town is now one particular of Europe’s most successful and greatest recognized clusters of its kind.
David Cameron not too long ago declared a long-time period £12bn financial plan for the East, stating that Cambridge is crucial to retaining Britain in the world-wide financial race. Drugs huge AstraZeneca is presently preparing a £330m world-wide study headquarters on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus in the south of the city.
AstraZeneca plans to create a community of glass-walled laboratories as portion of its new £330m global headquarters in Cambridge. Photograph: Herzog & de Meuron
In some approaches, Cambridge has been a victim of its own success. Federal government expense in early phase start-ups has frequently been misplaced as the companies have been not able to grow and instead have ended up getting purchased by abroad traders.
But the city’s officials say this is changing.
Cambridge Innovation Cash is one particular new investment fund that has released in the previous yr to offer finance for companies in the “Cambridge cluster”, house to around two,000 companies with fifty seven,000 personnel.
“Seed funding is actually properly served below,” says Victor Christou, the fund’s senior expenditure director. “But there is a check out that folks have to go away the cluster to get further funding. We want to maintain people right here. Folks in Cambridge are very tech-savvy and there is tons of expertise below that does not exist in several other areas.”
‘Dogged determination’
20 a long time ago, there had been no billion-greenback firms in Cambridge. But in the past two a long time it has become a hotbed for firms of that size, with 14 created, which includes chip designer ARM, software firm Autonomy and technological innovation group Aveva.
The current growth is thanks to three elements, suggests Charles Cotton, co-creator of the book The Cambridge Phenomenon .
First came a cultural change in views about commerce when lecturers at Cambridge University have been authorized to pursue non-academic roles, with several turning to entrepreneurship.
Second, the dotcom crash and its recovery changed perceptions about concern of failure and entrepreneurs started out using increased risks.
Last but not least, the “Cambridge Spirit” – with individuals in the cluster inclined to share expertise – has produced a special lifestyle defined by generosity and “dogged determination”, claims Cotton.
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“The atmosphere below is electric,” says Nitzan Rosenfeld, founder of clinical most cancers genomics organization Inivata. “Even ahead of my organization developed a excellent reputation, I had lots of apps for work since folks just wished to appear to Cambridge.”
Inivata focuses on improving most cancers tests and treatment, and was spun out of Cancer Investigation UK’s Cambridge operations very last year and raised £4m in a funding spherical in September. The business is establishing technology that tracks fragments of DNA drop by dying tumour cells to monitor how properly individuals are responding to therapy.
Dr Rosenfeld suggests the surroundings in Cambridge is ‘electric’
For US-raised Tom Weaver, founder of DNA investigation organization Congenica, Cambridge has the world’s best environment to foster innovation. He moved to the United kingdom 25 years in the past and to Cambridge from Oxford in 2010 to just take advantage of the amenities.
“People are a company’s most critical asset. And in Cambridge you are spoilt for option with talent – there are students, publish doctorates, knowledgeable researchers and engineers on the doorstep,” states Weaver.
Congenica is creating software program tools that permit doctors to interpret the genetic make-up of an specific. This aids to determine no matter whether they have a genetic disease and permits a definitive analysis. The firm just lately lifted £1m from Cambridge Innovation Money and is currently in the center of another fundraising round. The firm employs 14 folks complete-time, with a handful of part-timers.
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Silicon Valley equivalent?
The regional economy is flourishing. Unemployment in Cambridge is all around 1.4pc, against 5.5pc nationally, and the gross benefit added to the Uk economic climate for every occupation in Cambridge and the encompassing spot is £45,000, in comparison with London’s £34,two hundred.
Forty years ago there had been 20,000 hello-tech positions in Cambridge. That quantity has ballooned to forty eight,000, with men and women doing work in industries from drug modelling to establishing different fuels.
Scott White, head of chip developer Pragmatic, is a serial entrepeneur who lived in California prior to coming to Cambridge 14 several years in the past. His organization is developing what is properly a plastic chip that can be embedded in any object, from a coffee cup to packaging labels.
Scott White, the chief executive of chip developer Pragmatic, correct, and Victor Christou, senior expenditure director at Cambridge Innovation Cash
White’s idea is that any everyday item can have digital intelligence – for case in point, a chip in a bottle of wine could alert the consumer to when it is the best temperature to consume.
“Outside of London, there aren’t many locations that Individuals recognise. Cambridge, nonetheless, is a identified area when you are undertaking business globally,” he states, including that it is one particular of the “very handful of areas in the planet that assess to Silicon Valley in phrases of technologies curiosity and expertise.”