Cambridge Entrepreneurs: In the Business of Technology [Paperback]

When the Cambridge Phenomenon report was published in the early 1980s, it established Cambridge's cluster of hi-tech companies as the largest outside the United States and the city as a leading centre for innovation, research and development and entrepreneurial business.

Since then, the number of hi-tech companies in and around Cambridge has grown to around 1,200 and the supply of venture capital and supporting infrastructure and services has made it increasingly possible for businesses to start-up and flourish in the area, particularly in the IT and Life Sciences sectors. It has provided the opportunity for some great businessmen and women to emerge - individuals with true entrepreneurial flair.

Over the past 2 years, journalist Lindy Beveridge has interviewed a selection of Cambridge's most exciting and successful entrepreneurs. These 41 interviews, most of which first appeared in Cambridge's entrepreneurial newspaper Business Weekly, have now been assembled under one title - Cambridge Entrepreneurs: In the business of technology published by Granta Editions.

The profiles include university dons, those who have made their millions and moved on to other projects, serial entrepreneurs, late starters, godfathers and a new wave of recent business founders. All the adventures of entrepreneurs are chronicled here - the honing of innovative ideas, the search for funding, the hectic growth, the discovery of oneself and the addiction to the excitement and challenge of growing a world-class business.

The Cambridge Entrepreneurs include:

Stan Boland, David Chiswell, Peter Dawe, Chris Evans, Paul Kelly, Robin Saxby, Adam Twiss, Alex Van Someren, Mark Bodmer, Stephen Ives, Daniel Roach, John Snyder, Henry Azima, Iain Cubitt, Richard Dixey, Maureen Donnelly, Alastair Riddell, Chris Wade, Charles Cotton, Martin Davies, Daniel Hall, Phil O'Donovan, Ali Pourtaheri, Richard Friend, Andy Hopper, Alan Munro, Greg Winter, Steve Young, David Cleevely, Gordon Edge, Alan Goodman, Hermann Hauser, Walter Herriot, Roger Needham, Pilgrim Beart, Andrew Dames, Caroline Garey, Suzie Gilbert, Jonathan Milner, Melinda Rigby, Davin Yip

Each of these executives has succeeded in creating a concept and set about turning it into a multi-million pound business reality. This book offers a detailed insight into:

What they have achieved and how they did it
What motivated them to succeed and, in some cases, to do it again
The personal qualities and skills that helped them reach and often surpass their goals
Their own reflections on how they came to be what they are today

Who will read Cambridge Entrepreneurs

Anyone planning to start a company and succeed, especially in the hi-tech sector
Business schools and training centres
Conference organisers
Academic departments devoted to Management Studies
All those involved in IT and Life Sciences on an international basis
Anyone associated with companies founded by these entrepreneurs
Local Cambridge business communities
Venture capitalists, bankers and professional advisers
Journalists The international reputation of Cambridge's Silicon Fen remains indented by the recent downturn in technology stocks and fluctuation in the world's leading economies.

As a centre of high-tech entrepreneurship, Cambridge vies on equal terms with Silicon Valley in California and Rote 128 in Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE ENTREPRENEURS profiles 41 of the players in the entrepreneurial game, with the principal focus on how they came to be in business or became involved in other roles.

As Professor William Bygrave says in his Foreword: "No doubt about it, Cambridge Entrepreneurs is required reading for would-be entrepreneurs. It will provide them with role models to make their own decision to become a high-tech entrepreneur credible. And, perhaps just as important, anyone involved in the high-tech entrepreneurial process - supporters, angels, venture capitalists, development agencies, lawyers, university vice-chancellors, professors, strategic partners, and investment and commercial bankers - can learn a lot from these stories".

Are entrepreneurs born or made by their opportunities and interests? How much does the surrounding environment contribute to their motivation and to their chances of success? All around the world, economists and politicians are interested in establishing an entrepreneurial business climate. The dramatis personae in this desirable scenario are the entrepreneurs themselves. In recent years, Cambridge has become the UK's leading centre for entrepreneurial business, especially in the high-tech sector.

In these profiles, a selection of its high-tech entrepreneurs record their observations on their ambitions when they started out in life, tell us how they came to start their business and how they found backing - and reveal what they think about the technologies they are pioneering and the problems of addressing worldwide competition.

Cambridge Entrepreneurs is a must for every business school library, every economics department, and every research facility linked to high technology.

Lindy Beveridge, the author, is an Oxford graduate who has lived in Cambridge since the end of the 1960s. For more than twenty years she has been involved with the local high-tech industry and with the Cambridge Science Park, mainly in the role of public relations consultant.

Published by Granta Editions, an imprint of Book Production Consultants plc with headquarters in Cambridge, and sponsored by HSBC, CAMBRIDGE ENTREPRENEURS should be the inspiration for the entrepreneurs of the 21st Century.

I first got interested in what makes entrepreneurs tick when I went to work for Cambridge Consultants in 1979. I took over the editorship of its in-house magazine, Interface, which already had a tradition of publishing profiles of key members of its staff. Early on I interviewed Barry Griffiths (now CEO of Kore Technology) and was puzzled when he told me he wanted to set up a business - he seemed a classic laboratory scientist to me. But then I discovered that he came from a family of market traders - entrepreneurialism was in his blood and the environment in which he grew up. I began to think about why particular people were motivated at some point in their life to establish a new venture - was it genetics, their family environment or what made them do it?

Interviewing Cambridge's entrepreneurs and 'godfathers' first for The Technofiles published in Business Weekly and then for this book, has intensified my interest in what makes entrepreneurs. First of all, I found an enormous variety of people from many age groups who wanted to set up businesses - was it just a fashion? Some definitely seemed to be more inclined to risk-taking than others and I wonder if this may be down to genetics. Some have been seeking some kind of new start in their lives at the time they decided to launch a new business, usually for personal reasons which ranged from boredom to traumatic life events. Some seemed to have a strongly creative bent where technology simply happened to be their field. Some seemed to do it out a sort of competitiveness with setting up a business being a way to steal a march on the opposition. All were absolutely passionate about what they were doing and hardly motivated by the thought of making money at all though they were pleased to have it when they were successful. Just about all of them wanted to do it again. I came to the conclusion that what people became addicted to was the total demands that entrepreneurial business makes on individuals - it asks of them all that they are capable of as human beings, not just as technologists, and if they succeed they feel validated as human beings. That's a pretty good reward for all that effort and if you get a lot of money too, I think anyone would be tempted to do it again.

Lindy Beveridge is an Oxford University graduate and a former Lecturer in English Language and Literature at the college now called Anglia Polytechnic University.

In 1979 she was headhunted to Cambridge Consultants (the technology consultancy owned by Arthur D Little) as its in-house communications specialist and editor of its prize-winning house magazine Interface. She left to set up her own business in 1983, Cambridge's first independent Public Relations consultancy, and was its Managing Director for more than eight years. The company specialised in the field of science and technology and publicised the report entitled The Cambridge Phenomenon which first drew worldwide attention to the extent of hi-tech activity in Cambridge. Since 1983, she has handled Public Relations for the Cambridge Science Park and is editor of its regular newsletter Catalyst.

Lindy has lived and worked in Cambridge for the past 30 years and is a well-known member of its business community. She was a City Councillor during the 70s and has had many involvements with local community and on the boards and appeal committees of a number of charitable organisations. She has acted as a consultant to the University of Hertfordshire to establish a mentoring scheme for a new course for women entrepreneurs and as a Business Advisor for the Prince's Youth Business Trust. She is currently a non-executive director of Lifespan NHS Trust which is responsible for Cambridgeshire's community health services. She is a member of the Cambridge Network, established in July 1998 to link individuals and companies within Cambridge's hi-tech and university communities.

Lindy is also a journalist who writes features for a locally published business paper, Business Weekly and her book has grown out of a series of profiles entitled The TechnoFiles which began to appear there under her byline from late 1999.