Background

The Cambridge Ecosystem has developed over the years offering strong support to local businesses especially in the tech sectors. Its approach is informed and shaped by data and insights about the city and wider region from the Cambridge Cluster Insights, a powerful mapping tool, endorsed by SUI, which identifies early stage and scaling businesses to be targeted by its Business Growth Service as well as monitor labour market trends. Insights from the platform are used to attract talent, customers and investors from the UK and overseas to businesses across the region’s 14 local authority districts.

There are currently over 97,000 companies identified in the Cambridge Cluster Insights database within the area, with 205 being scaleups that generate £3.1bn in turnover and employ over 19,000 people. Knowledge-intensive businesses are particularly strong in the area with the Information and Communication Technology, Life Sciences and Services being the leading sectors. It also has the highest number of patent applications in the UK – 309 patent applications published per 100,000 residents – and is home to 23 unicorn companies.

The Cambridge ecosystem is well connected and supports businesses in all stages of their scaleup journey. It is based on five key components that work together driving further innovation:

• Knowledge Engine: The ecosystem tends to be research driven, enhancing the generation and development of new ideas.
• Talent & Skills: The local universities of Anglia Ruskin and University of Cambridge develop the future talent pipeline while also help with upskilling the current talent. Additionally, large corporates, such as Microsoft or AstraZeneca, that have moved into the area are also developing local talent. 
• Space & Infrastructure: including different hubs operating in the area that help businesses start and scale up their businesses. These also include Eagle Labs and Babraham Research Campus, both endorsed by SUI. These providers are also working closely with the universities, offering targeted scaleup support such as the collaboration between Eagle Labs and University of Cambridge Judge Business School.
• Investment and Professional Services: including all local financiers offering not only growth capital but also the support these businesses need to scale up further. Such local financiers endorsed by SUI include Cambridge Angels and Cambridge Innovation Capital
• Community support: including organisations such as Cambridge Ahead that help and promote coordination across the ecosystem and guide businesses through the appropriate support at each scale up stage. 

Every cluster goes through its own evolution and support in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough is currently evolving to further enable innovation and scaling up. The area is rethinking how to deploy support in a better way, make different scaling pathways clearer  for businesses, keep the local community of support active and dynamic, and keep building on what works well and not spend time on things that don’t add value or duplicate efforts. 

Aligned with the ScaleUp Institute’s data and insights, the area has recognised six success factors to achieve their goals and seeks to identify specific ‘interventions’ for each one of them. These include access to growth capital, infrastructure, talent, leadership, research funding, and engagement with the local, regional and central government. 

ONS data for 2021 shows that there are 430 scaleups in the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority: 170 are classified as scaleups due to rapid growth in their employees, 350 are classified as scaleups due to rapid growth in their turnover and 90 are scaleups that are increasing both employment and turnover simultaneously.

The ONS data reflects that across the four-year period from 2018 to 2021 the density of scaleups has decreased by -4.54 per 100,000 of population per year.

SCALEUP PROGRAMMES

Support to access finance, new markets, knowledge transfer as well as partnerships with academia and training and mentoring programmes are available to local scaling businesses. 

Growth Works supports scaling and growth-ambitious businesses across the region to scale further. Set up by Cambridge and Peterborough Combined Authority, it is built around four key strands of activity with a particular focus on strategic advice and support through access to peer networks, masterclasses, dedicated courses and one to one consultancy along with access to equity and grant funding to accelerate growth.

Babraham Research Campus is a leading exemplar of effective infrastructure for life science scaleups. The Campus is a highly connected, sustainable and dynamic ecosystem for life sciences, combining flexible working space with comprehensive support programmes and close links to academia and the latest research. The campus is also home to One Nucleus, which offers specialist training spanning biosafety, laboratory health and safety, managing life science projects and drug development.

Cambridge is home to the first Barclays Eagles Lab and Barclays Eagles’ flagship incubator. It has created a community of innovators, specialising in Artificial Intelligence with close links to the universities and to AI pioneers who are regular visitors to the Lab to share knowledge and expertise with members. 

The Bradfield Centre, in partnership with Cambridge University, provides space for early-stage and scaleup businesses in the technology sectors. Along with the flexible co-working spaces further support is available including tech and entrepreneurship related events, connections to Angel and VC investors, and connections with the University’s talent through the Trinity Bradfield Prize. Scaleups can also access an internship program running with Trinity College and access events with student organisations and the Judge Business School.

Provided by the Cambridge Judge Business School, Accelerate Cambridge offers a three-month programme that combines entrepreneurship training with regular coaching and mentoring, as well as access to shared workspace. 

Cambridge Wireless is an international community for companies involved in the research, development and application of wireless and mobile, internet, semiconductor and software technologies. It stimulates debate and collaboration, harnesses and shares knowledge and helps to build connections between academia and industry. Across the year it runs different programmes that fall in six categories: Innovation, International, Knowledge Exchange, Public Sector, Start-Up and Scale-Up Support, and Sustainability. 

The Low Carbon Innovation Fund 2 (LCIF2) is a co-investment venture capital fund seeking to invest £11m to help close funding rounds worth at least £30m that make measurable reductions to Greenhouse Gas emissions. The fund co-invests alongside private sector investors such as founders, angel investors and other funds.

Started in 2023, the Creative East: Create Growth Programme is a £1.275m investment readiness and business support programme for creative industries in Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. Fully funded by DCMS, the programme offers a series of specialist seminars and masterclasses, roundtable sessions, pitching sessions, one-to-one expert and specialist support and networking events to help businesses with high growth aspirations gain investment opportunities and grow.

Additional public and private programmes operating in the East of England can be found on the scaleup support finder here.

The Babraham Research Campus has a strong community of more than 2,000 organisations and contributes £286m GVA to the UK economy. Campus companies have a combined value of more than £5bn and have raised around £500m of commercial investment in 2021/22. Campus-based companies have on average accelerated their fundraising by three months and increased the amount of funds raised by 10%.  It is also estimated that employee numbers of resident firms are around 20% larger than they otherwise may have been due to the Campus location. 

338 early-stage and scaleup businesses have been helped by the Accelerate Cambridge programmes since 2013. 27% of them have at least one female founder and 33% operate in the Healthcare/HealthTech industry. They have secured £604m in funding including £475m in equity and £43m in grants.

IMPACT AND RESULTS

The area has identified specific areas of improvement to focus on as they are rethinking their local scaleup support. These include a focus on the quality of life by taking action to reduce local inequalities; continue the access of growth capital for innovative early stage and scaling businesses and increase the level of investment to more advanced international examples; address and plan better current and future infrastructure needs of research, office and especially lab space requirements; and attracting, developing and maintaining a diverse talent pool.

FUTURE PLANS

The area has identified specific areas of improvement to focus on as they are rethinking their local scaleup support. These include a focus on the quality of life by taking action to reduce local inequalities; continue the access of growth capital for innovative early stage and scaling businesses and increase the level of investment to more advanced international examples; address and plan better current and future infrastructure needs of research, office and especially lab space requirements; and attracting, developing and maintaining a diverse talent pool.

LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS

According to ScaleUp Institute analysis of data received directly from ONS for years 2018-2021, the following picture emerges on the local environment.

Local Authorities located within the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough area have a moderate density of scaleups, and the trend between 2018 and 2021 reveals the following:

Scaleups by Density: Moderate

The vertical axis of this matrix shows where local authorities located in this Combined Authority stand compared to the rest of the UK: 4 of the 6 local authorities have an above median density of scaleups measured by employment growth and 3 of the 6 local authorities have an above median density of scaleups measured by turnover growth.

Scaleup Trends Over Time: Needs Improvement

The horizontal axis of this matrix shows whether the density of scaleups has increased or decreased over time relative to the rest of the UK: 5 of the 6 local authorities are below the median in terms of improving the density of scaleups by employment in their community and 4 of the 6 local authorities are below the median for scaleups by turnover.

The ScaleUp Institute will continue to monitor this closely in the coming years to track whether local initiatives move the dial in the right direction for increasing the density of scaleups.