BDO LLP | INTERNATIONAL TECH HUB
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in the most high-profile areas, and generally the constant inflow of new talent allows the job market to keep replenishing itself.
LONDON HAS A GOOD RECORD FOR ENCOURAGING TECH INNOVATION
THE TECH LANDSCAPE Within central London, one tech area could be seen as occupying a rough sweep of the city which runs from central areas like Clerkenwell and Farringdon, stretches east through Old Street, Shoreditch and Whitechapel, and then extends southwards to take in London Bridge and Southwark. This London area is associated with digital media, software, edtech and more traditional tech players. Then there’s the Heathrow Airport effect, which has seen the development of another tech belt that goes out from west London, through Reading – home to the likes of Oracle, Microsoft and Dell – all the way now to Bristol. Then, between the M3 and the M4, you have a series of towns which are host to a lot of the big US tech companies, such as Basingstoke and Bracknell. There’s some activity on the south coast too, around towns like Brighton and Southampton. Finally, there’s the “brain belt” of tech activity running from Oxford to Milton Keynes and on to, which is also heavily associated with life sciences. Most of these hubs operate on the typical tech model, with synergy from universities and the big tech giants creating an ecosystem of specialist talent, supply chains and spinoffs. In London, for example, we often see people who leave Google and go on to build their own business as part of Google’s supply chain or in partnership. Similarly, in the Thames Valley, you see a number of start-ups formed by people peeling off from the European HQs of the big US tech giants. When we look at the Tech Track 100 every year, we always see a great deal of high- growth tech in the Thames Valley area.
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