In a story being carried by Business Weekly, Cambridge has been listed fourth amongst European clusters for institutional investment, behind London, Paris and Tel Aviv.
Don’t panic yet though because the report also says the city attracts the most investment in Europe for ‘hard innovations’. This is certainly borne out by the number of hardware start-ups that are created in Cambridge, there are over 20 on Electronics Weekly’s current map of UK start-ups.
While Cambridge is top for hardware, an increasing amount of that funding is going to software now.
Overall institutional investment in companies in the [Cambridge] Cluster dropped to £135m in 2006, losing £32m from 2005's figures. In addition, the city's share of deals made by the top 20 European clusters showed a reduction from 9.3 per cent in 2005 to 5.6 per cent in the first half of 2007. The Cluster’s drop in investment and deals is attributable to the rise of investment in ‘soft innovation,’ covering fields such as Service and Retail, Web, and Mediatech.