The Cambridge Phenomenon Revisited

Book excerpt: "Part 1 provides an analytical overview of the Phenomenon and its growth in scale and complexity over the last fifteen years. It examines different aspects of the high-tech business community, including start-ups and spin-outs, the larger and long-established high-tech firms, firms that have moved into the region, and four of the key sectors - software, telecoms, biotechnology and technology consultancy. Changes in the University and related research institutes are also reviewed. Part 2 looks in greater depth at a number of particularly interesting aspects of the Cambridge high-tech cluster. Detailed analyses are made of two contrasting sectors: biotechnology, which has grown quickly and exhibits many of the attributes of competitive cluster; and instrumentation, which was one of the earliest foundations of high-tech business in Cambridge, but over the past fifteen years has recorded the weakest sectoral performance." -- BACK COVER.