Edited by Kate Kirk

The Cambridge

Phenomenon5 0 Y E A R S O F I N N O V A T I O N A N D E N T E R P R I S E

Book specifi cations

270 x 230 mmhardback208ppretail price £50

“The Cambridge cluster qualifi es as the most innovative and entrepreneurial silicon landscape outside of the US.

– rob koepp, Clusters of Creativity, p. 5.

Recognised as ‘a phenomenon of considerable signifi cance to British industry’ by the Financial

Times back in 1980, Cambridge is home to an experienced, resourceful and successful community of

entrepreneurs and known around the world for its innovative companies.

The Cambridge Phenomenon: 50 years of innovation and enterprise will cover the remarkable history of the

Phenomenon since 1960, from the challenges of starting businesses in a hostile environment to the boom years

in the late 1980s and 1990s, the dotcom bust in 2000 and the new reality of starting and growing businesses

when money is tight. It will also explore the different factors behind Cambridge’s success, investigating the ways

investors, government policies, networks, consultancies and even pubs have contributed to growing what has been

described as the single most important region in the UK in terms of GDP generated from innovation and technology.

Contributions from people inside and outside the cluster will look at the Cambridge Phenomenon from different

perspectives, including where it stands in global terms, strengths and weakness, and the opportunities and threats

that will emerge in the coming decades. The book will be a must-have read for the people and companies who

have contributed to building the Cambridge technology cluster, and also for those who want to discover the secrets

of Cambridge’s success.

Please look through this brochure to fi nd sample text, images and layouts refl ecting the the book as a whole.

Cover: DNA Double Helix sculpture (Charles Jencks 2005)

at Clare College, Cambridge. Photo © Julian Andrews

aBout the Book

Alamy

ForewordIntroduction

Life StoryEarly days: 1960-1969Growing pains: 1970-1979Putting the Phenomenon on the map: 1980-1989Momentum: 1990-1999Into the 21st century: 2000-2010

CLuSterS, ConSteLLationS and CLoudSConsulting and support servicesElectronicsEngineeringHealthcare and BioscienceSoftwareTelecommunications

no CLuSter iS an iSLandEntrepreneursGovernmentIncubatorsMoneyNetworking and meeting placesResearch labsScience parksService organisationsSkills and trainingUniversities

the future iS...Challenges

LaSt wordWhat are the secrets of Cambridge’s success?

Bibliography

Book ContentS

Alamy

By permission of Cam

bridge Science Park

t he first section of this book describes the Cambridge Phenomenon from a chronological, historical

perspective. But it is also helpful to look at what has happened around Cambridge in the last 50 years

from a thematic point of view. The drivers of growth and their impacts on the Cambridge cluster have

clearly changed over time, so the second section of the book takes a sector-led approach to the Phenomenon.

However, while we can clearly see that instrumentation

was an early driver, and that the development of computing

played a crucial role in the boom of the early 1980s, it

becomes increasingly difficult to pigeonhole Phenomenon

companies into one sector or another as we approach the

present day. Instead, we find convergence and overlap as

innovators discover that a combination of technologies is

the best way to solve the problems they are addressing.

For instance inkjet printing, which may have been classified

as industrial in its original incarnation, today encompasses

electronics, software and materials, and the relatively new

field of biological computing is a far cry from the 3,000

valves and 32 5-foot-long delay lines that made up the

room-sized EDSAC 1.

Speaking at the Cambridge Phenomenon 50th

anniversary conference in October 2010, Professor Chris

Lowe, Director of the Institute of Biotechnology in the

University of Cambridge, highlighted one very practical

example where technologies are converging, in healthcare.

Lowe described the potential for a contact lens that

transmits information about blood sugar levels in the

tear fluid, to help doctors monitor and manage conditions

such as Type 2 diabetes. These devices will combine

expertise not only in bioscience, but also in materials and

ICT, bringing together what might have been considered

completely separate sectors 20 or 30 years ago.

There are clearly exciting times ahead as technologies

converge and head off in totally new directions, but

for the purposes of this book, it is not necessary to get

bogged down in definitions and delineations. So we take

a broad-brush approach, using themes such as consulting,

electronics, engineering, software, biosciences and

healthcare, which help us to highlight particular sectors

and activities that have stood out as the Cambridge

Phenomenon has evolved. Some companies will fall under

more than one category, but where repetition is inevitable,

this simply serves to demonstrate how interconnected the

Phenomenon companies have become.

97

Left: Aerial view of Cambridge Science Park. Below: EDSAC I, nearly complete, W.Renwick.

introduCtion

By permission of Cam

bridge Science Park

ComPuting

On 11th January 1982, the BBC aired the fi rst episode of a

new series, The Computer Programme. Aimed at teaching

the public about computers as part of the BBC’s Computer

Literacy Project, the series focused on the BBC Micro, a

computer that had been commissioned specifi cally for the

programmes. The Micro was designed and produced by

Acorn Computers. Founded by Chris Curry and Hermann

Hauser in 1978, Acorn was one of two Cambridge

companies – the other was Sinclair Research – competing

for the UK’s home computer market in the early 1980s. It

was commonly assumed that the launch of the BBC Micro

meant that Acorn had cornered the market, but Sinclair’s

ZX81, launched nearly a year earlier, was already selling

well; by the end of 1982, over 300,000 ZX81s had been sold,

including 15,000 a month in the US.

The BBC contracted Acorn to supply 12,000 Micros, but

demand quickly exceeded expectations, and the company

had to expand rapidly to cope, eventually selling almost 1.5

million machines. Meanwhile, Sinclair Research launched

the rival ZX Spectrum on 23rd April 1982, which would go

on to sell over fi ve million units worldwide.

Cambridge in the early 1980s was thus home to two

world-leading computer companies, perhaps not surprising

given that the University had already chalked up several

fi rsts in computing. The ‘difference’ and ‘analytical’

machines designed by Peterhouse alumnus Charles

Babbage in the 19th century are recognised as the world’s

fi rst computers. In 1949, Maurice Wilkes, Director of the

Cambridge University Mathematical Laboratory (renamed

the Computer Laboratory in 1970), fi red up the fi rst digital

stored program computer, the Electronic Delay Storage

Automatic Calculator (EDSAC I). EDSAC II, the fi rst full-scale

microprogrammed machine, began operating in 1958, and

was in turn succeeded by the TITAN in 1964, which had

remote access and the fi rst operating system.

The Mathematical Laboratory was originally set

up to provide services to University departments that

required large amounts of number-crunching, such as

radio-astronomy, meteorology and genetics, but Wilkes

and his team also continued to develop the possibilities

of the computer itself. Among these were graphical user

interfaces and computer-aided design (CAD), which would

sow the seeds of the computing cluster around Cambridge.

The small size of the computer department and the

University’s policy of short-term contracts meant that

researchers who could not get permanent positions had

to fi nd some other way of making a living in their chosen

fi eld. So while Acorn and Sinclair Research may have

been the fi rst Cambridge companies to design and market

computers, hardware and software fi rms were not new.

Some 11 companies were represented at the fi rst meeting

of the Cambridge Computer Group, held in the Eagle pub in

98

Above: ZX81 - the ZX81 was a home computer produced by Sinclair Research and manufactured in Scotlandby Timex Corporation. www.computinghistory.org.uk

Left: BBC Micro (or BBC Microcomputer System). www.computinghistory.org.uk

Courtesy Rick Dickinson

Courtesy Allen Boothroyd

1979. At the second meeting later that same year, around

35 companies gave short introductions to what they were

doing. By the time Sinclair and Acorn launched the era of

the personal computer in the UK, Cambridge was already

home to some of the leading players in the industry and

beginning to see itself as a centre for computing excellence.

Shape Data was one of the fi rst to emerge, founded in

1974 by members of the University’s CAD group, Charles

Lang, Alan Grayer, Ian Braid and Peter Veenman. In 1978,

Charles’ brother Jack founded software consultancy

Topexpress with John Ffowcs-Williams, the company

numbering the Ministry of Defence among its clients.

Topexpress was sold to Vickers Ship Building and then on to

Computer Science Corporation, and its current incarnation

has around 2000 employees in the UK. The CAD Centre

itself would become a private company in 1983, and a

publicly quoted company in 1996. It is now known as Aveva,

with offi ces in 39 countries, a market capitalisation of more

than £1bn and revenues of over £148 million in 2010.

But the early promise heralded by Acorn’s and Sinclair

Research’s booming sales, along with the accompanying

glamour of Acorn-sponsored F3 racing cars, private planes,

and a knighthood for Clive Sinclair in 1983, was overcome

by production problems and unfortunate business decisions,

and neither company survived. In 1985, Acorn relinquished

79% ownership to Olivetti; a year later, the Sinclair

computer brand was sold to Alan Sugar’s Amstrad.

Despite this, the two companies have had a lasting, and

decidedly positive, effect on the Cambridge Phenomenon.

Hermann Hauser and Andy Hopper of Acorn co-founded the

Olivetti Research Lab in 1986. Sixteen years later, when

the lab was closed by its then owners, AT&T, a number of

new companies were born out of the Lab’s existing projects,

including Real VNC and Ubisense. Hauser went on to found

Amadeus Capital Partners in 1997 and has been a driving

force in the funding of technology companies ever since.

Ex-employees of Sinclair Research have been involved

in a number of Cambridge success stories, including

world-leading DSL company Virata, (the fi rst spin-out from

the Olivetti Research Lab in 1993), which hit a market

capitalisation of over $5 billion in March 2000; and a dozen

Acorn employees set up a spin-out in 1990 to exploit a new

microprocessor architecture they were developing, founding

the company known today as ARM.

CLuSterS, ConSteLLationS and CLoudS Electronics

Far right: CAD Group 1968.Members of the CAD Group outside the Mathematical Laboratory (it was renamed Computer Laboratory in 1970).

l to r Robin Forrest, Richard Pankhurst, Peter Woodsford, Andrew Armit, Phil Cross, Malcolm Wood, Peter Payne.

ARM-based chips lie at the heart of many of the devices we

use or rely on every day. The original SWOT analysis for the

company, dated 18th December 1990, lists the strengths of

the underlying technology as low power, low cost, simple

and small. It is these qualities that have led to ARM’s

ubiquity, with ARM designs being found in everything from

smartphones to household appliances, and from computers

to cars. By the end of 2010, over 20 billion chips based

on ARM designs had been manufactured. At the 2011

Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the biggest technology

trade fair in the world, CEO Warren East pointed out to a

Daily Telegraph journalist that “over 70% of all the stands

have a product built on our technology.” Not bad for a

company that started with 12 engineers in a barn.

ARM grew from a project to design a faster and more

efficient microprocessor for Acorn computers in the early

1980s. The project was backed with what Acorn co-founder

Hermann Hauser described as “the only two things we had:

no money and no people”. By 1985, Acorn’s engineers had

designed the world’s first RISC processor. It was 20 times

faster than the 6502 chip found in Acorn’s BBC Micro, but

by this time the UK home computer market had collapsed

and Acorn had to be rescued by Olivetti. By the end of the

year, the RISC project was in danger of being closed down.

Luckily, Apple was going to need a fast, low-powered chip

for its Newton Notepad, and a deal between Apple and

Olivetti/Acorn, with support from chip manufacturer VSLI,

resulted in a new company, Advanced RISC Machines.

The first employees were 12 Acorn engineers, including

Tudor Brown (President since 2008), Jamie Urquhart and

Mike Muller (now Chief Technology Officer). Robin Saxby

(knighted in 2002) joined full-time as CEO in 1991. The team

100

“one of the most successful spin-offs in the history of European technology-based industry.Garnsey, E, Lorenzoni, G, and Ferriani, S. 2008.

Speciation through entrepreneurial spin-off: The Acorn-ARM story.

Research Policy 37 (2008) 210–224.

Warren East – Chief Executive Officer.

arm

moved into a converted barn in Swaffham Bulbeck, saving

money by putting in the telephone system themselves—

“Andy Smith crawled through some very tiny spaces”

according to the Acorn Newsletter that Spring.

a ‘chipless chip company’Saxby decided that ARM would licence its designs to

semiconductor companies. These companies could then

develop chips based on the ARM designs for their own

customers. ARM would receive a fee for each licence,

and then a royalty for every ARM-based chip the licensee

company sold. This tied ARM’s success to the success of its

semiconductor partners, but avoided the problems associated

with manufacturing, or partnering with just one company.

101

CLuSterS, ConSteLLationS and CLoudS Electronics

Above: The chip which powered the very first Apple Newton and is arguably the reason why ARM Ltd was founded in the first place. Above right: ARM’s first office Below right: The 12 founders from Acorn were all engineers. They were joined by Robin Saxby as CEO to add some commercial experience. At the end of 2010, ARM employed nearly 1,900 people; the majority of them are engineers. (ARM Annual Report 2010)

Saxby knew the company would have to survive by

selling licences until the royalties started coming in,

and it was far from certain that the risk would pay off.

Warren East joined the company in 1994 to set up a

consulting offering so that ARM could work directly with

semiconductor companies and their design teams. The

turning point came when Texas Instruments licensed an

ARM design in 1994, as part of its strategy to “win the

mobile phone business of a relatively unknown Finnish

company, Nokia” (Garnsey et al 2008). “It was an industry

secret,” President of ARM Holdings Tudor Brown told

Cambridge Business Editor Jenny Chapman, “but others

started to take licences from us on the back of that.”

By the time the new generation of Nokia phones was

launched in 1997, consulting was a profit centre and ARM’s

licence-royalty model started to bear fruit. Revenues more

than doubled between 1998 and 2000.

Warren East took over from Saxby as CEO in 2001.

“The Nokia deal was key to making ARM central to

the markets,” he points out. Today, more than 200

semiconductor companies have purchased over 700

licences, and royalties now account for some 50% of total

revenue. The launch of the iPhone in 2007 gave ARM

another boost, as it and competing smartphones rely on

the CamBridge Phenomenon 50 years of innovation and enterprise

102

450

400

350

300

250

200

150

100

50

0

ARM TOTAL REVENUES AND ROYALTIES 1995–2010

£ m

illio

n

revenues £mroyalties £m

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

Above: an example of an ARM Powered® product.

Right: ARM1 building at Fulbourn Road Cambridge. Below: ARM9 processors play an important part in the IceCube project — a neutrino-detecting ‘telescope’ buried deep under the ice in the Antarctic.

several, more complex processors, multiplying the royalties

ARM gets for every phone sold.

But the company has always sought to extend its

market beyond the mobile technology arena, and other

products that rely on ARM include bar code readers,

anti-lock braking systems, ATMs and hard disk drives. The

company has also extended its business model, so that

it not only designs the underlying architecture for chips,

but also provides data engines, 3D processors, digital

libraries, embedded memories, peripherals, software and

development tools, analogue functions and high-speed

connectivity products.

ARM’s low-power mantra fits perfectly with efforts

to reduce energy consumption. Each generation of ARM

designs have been more efficient and used less power,

going, as Warren East puts it, from needing the energy

equivalent of seven custard creams to run the first chips

to needing only a crumb in the latest generation. There is

enormous potential for ARM designs to help reduce power

consumption across a range of applications, including the

big server farms that sustain the internet, and the 10 billion

electric motors produced annually.

ARM listed on the London Stock Exchange and

NASDAQ in 1998. In 2010, market cap hit $6bn and ARM

knocked Cadbury out of the FTSE100. In January 2011,

Microsoft announced that ARM chips will power the next

version of the Windows operating system, Windows 8,

getting ARM into yet more devices around the world.

CLuSterS, ConSteLLationS and CLoudS Electronics

103

“Most people will use at least one ARM microprocessor – often several – each day, without knowing it.Financial Times 30 July 2007

Michael Derringer

f or a time in the 1950s, it looked as though Cambridge might remain a small market town with a couple

of sizeable companies, Marshall’s and the Pye Group, and not much else. The University had endorsed

the 1950 Holford Wright report, which recommended “a resolute effort...to reduce the high rate of

growth”, and the town planners concurred. However, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, PhD students from

the Cavendish and the Engineering Department could be found moonlighting for new technology companies

such as Metals Research and Cambridge Consultants that were quietly operating out of old bakeries and

garden sheds.

Attitudes began to change in the 1960s, fostered

by the newly elected Labour government’s focus on

technology as a way to drive the national economy, and

promoted in Cambridge by individuals such as Cavendish

Professor of Experimental Physics and Nobel Prize winner

Sir Nevill Mott. Mott chaired a sub-committee of the

Senate set up to explore the relationship between the

University and industry. His committee’s report, published

in 1969, recommended that the University “strengthen

the interaction between teaching and scientific research

on the one hand and its application in industry, medicine

and agriculture on the other”. A key recommendation was

that Cambridge develop a science park, modelled on that

established at Stanford in California in the 1950s.

The Mott Committee report was pivotal, acknowledging

that Cambridge – both the town and the University –

needed to engage with industry, and identifying a concrete

way to start building that relationship. The County

Development Plan was reviewed, and “bona fide science-

based industry” was, if not exactly welcomed with open

25

CamBridge univerSity and the Phenomenon

Left: Cambridge from the University Library Tower. Right: Science Park orientation display board.

Michael Derringer

arms, to be given encouragement and facilities. The Science

Park was built on Trinity land on the outskirts of Cambridge,

and accepted its first tenant, Laser-Scan (founded by a

group from the Cavendish Laboratory), in 1973.

Since the 1970s, the University has played numerous

roles in supporting technology entrepreneurship. Colleges

have provided additional space and facilities, such as the

St John’s Innovation Centre and the Peterhouse Technology

Park, and departments have done everything from

originating the technology to providing the entrepreneurs

and the manpower to see ideas to fruition. The Institute

for Manufacturing, established in the Department of

26

“The Mott report is widely and justifiably regarded in Cambridge today as constituting a watershed in the evolution of the University’s official attitude to industrial development and to collaboration with the local authorities. It was almost certainly without precedent in Britain at the time that a university should take the lead so explicitly and forcefully in such planning matters – it is still highly unusual even today.The Cambridge Phenomenon: The Growth of High Technology Industry in a University Town

Segal Quince Wicksteed, 1985.

the CamBridge Phenomenon 50 years of innovation and enterprise

View of the Science Park, built on Trinity College land.

Courtesy of Bidwell’s, Cam

bridge

Engineering in 1998 to “form more effective lines of

communication with the leaders of British industry”,

provides another way in which members of the University

can bring technology to industry, and its research into many

aspects of creating and sustaining businesses applies

across the spectrum from start-ups to global companies.

More recently, clarification of the University’s policy

on intellectual property in 2005 and the establishment of

Cambridge Enterprise in 2006, a wholly owned subsidiary of

the University tasked with assisting the commercialisation

of University technologies, have formalised what used to

be a fairly ad hoc process of spinning companies out of

the University. The intellectual property arrangements are

claimed to be “one of the most generous revenue-sharing

arrangements in the world” for academics, and Cambridge

Enterprise provides not only expertise in issues such as

patents, consultancy and technology transfer, but seed

funding through its Discovery, Challenge and Venture funds.

In 2010, Cambridge Enterprise reported that its first

three years of operation had seen income of over £27

million from licensing, consultancy and equity transactions,

of which more than £22 million had been returned to the

University and researchers. There are now around 1,000

researchers throughout the University engaged with

Cambridge Enterprise on some aspect of commercialisation

and some £3.9 million in funding has been awarded to

67 projects since 2006. Many departments now have

designated Enterprise Champions helping promote

commercialisation of research, and 2010 saw 124 patent

applications filed and 59 new business ideas disclosed.

Among the companies that have emerged with

University support are Sphere Fluidics, which came

out of the Chemistry Department, and Enval, out of the

Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology.

Founders of Sphere Fluidics Professors Chris Abel and

Wilhelm Huck secured investment from the Discovery Fund

to pursue commercialisation of their latest advances in

picolitre droplet technology. Enval, which has developed

a way to recycle laminated packaging such as tetrapaks

and toothpaste tubes, started out with investment from

the Challenge Fund and also won the Cambridge University

Entrepreneurs business creation competition in 2005.

no CLuSter iS an iSLand Cambridge University and the Phenomenon

27

Cavendish and Laboratory of molecular Biology nobel prize winnersTwo labs that have produced more entrepreneurs than most are the Computer Lab

and Mott’s own lab, the Cavendish, perhaps not surprising given that the two labs

have over 30 Nobel prizes between them.

Lord Rayleigh (Physics, 1904)

Sir J J Thomson (Physics, 1906)

Lord Ernest Rutherford

(Chemistry, 1908)

Sir Lawrence Bragg (Physics, 1915)

Charles Barkla (Physics, 1917)

Francis Aston (Chemistry, 1922)

Charles Wilson (Physics, 1927)

Arthur Compton (Physics, 1927)

Sir Owen Richardson (Physics, 1928)

Sir James Chadwick (Physics, 1928)

Sir George Thomson (Physics, 1937)

Sir Edward Appleton (Physics, 1947)

Lord Patrick Blackett (Physic, 1948)

Sir John Cockcroft (Physics, 1948)

Ernest Walton (Physics, 1951)

Fred Sanger (Chemistry, 1958)

Francis Crick (Physiology or

Medicine, 1962)

James Watson (Physiology or

Medicine, 1962)

Max Perutz (Chemistry, 1962)

Sir John Kendrew (Chemistry, 1962)

Dorothy Hodgkin (Chemistry, 1964)

Brian Josephson (Physics, 1973)

Sir Martin Ryle (Physics, 1974)

Anthony Hewish (Physics, 1974)

Sir Nevil Mott (Physics, 1977)

Philip Anderson (Physics, 1977)

Pjotr Kapitsa (Physics, 1978)

Allan Cormack (Physiology or

Medicine 1979)

Fred Sanger (Chemistry, 1980)

Sir Aaron Klug (Chemistry, 1982)

César Milstein (Physiology or

Medicine, 1984)

Georges Köhler (Physiology or

Medicine, 1984)

Norman Ramsey (Physics, 1989)

John Walker (Chemistry, 1997)

Sydney Brenner (Physiology or

Medicine, 2002)

Bob Horvitz (Physiology or

Medicine, 2002)

John Sulston (Physiology or

Medicine, 2002)

Venki Ramakrishnan (Chemistry, 2009)

Michael Derringer

Cambridge Judge Business School has been closely

involved with entrepreneurship and the local technology

cluster since its inception. The original Advisory Board,

which helped establish the School’s precursor, the Institute

of Management Studies, included Matthew Bullock, who

played a key role in the funding of technology start-ups

around Cambridge in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Bullock argued the importance of providing management

training to these young companies, which were often

founded by engineers and scientists out of the university

with little or no business experience.

Numerous other local entrepreneurs, including David

Cleevely, Hermann Hauser and Alex van Someren, have

participated in the growth of Cambridge Judge since then,

as mentors, teachers, and entrepreneurs in residence.

The links continue today, and are now strengthened by

MBA and MPhil students undertaking consulting projects

for local companies. The Cambridge cluster being highly

varied, students can work with operations that range in

size from the FTSE100 company ARM to start-ups that

are just beginning to define their markets. Cambridge

Judge students also participate in the well-established

28

CamBridge Judge BuSineSS SChooL

The Judge Business School (now The University of Cambrdge Judge Business School) was opened by HM Queen Elizabeth II in 1995. The new building was designed by architect John Outram.

Ben Watkins

business plan competitions run by Cambridge University

Entrepreneurs, CUE, as competitors and as advisors.

The importance of entrepreneurship as an integral

part of the School’s research and teaching programmes

was cemented by the establishment of the Centre for

Entrepreneurial Learning in 2003. Over 140 businesses

have been started up by CfEL alumni, in Cambridge and

elsewhere, and participants in the Ignite summer schools

raised over £50 million in funding between 1999 and

2009. Among companies started up by CfEL alumni are

Alphamosaic (sold to Broadcom in 2004), BlueGnome and

Daniolabs (sold to Summit in 2007).

More recently, iPhone app company Magicsolver.com

was co-founded in 2009 by Cambridge MBA Emmanuel

Carraud, and computer science graduates Oliver Lamming

and Leon Palm, who originally met at an Enterprise Tuesday

event organised by CfEL. They went on to win not only

the CUE business plan competition, but also three months

at the Plug & Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale, California,

awarded at the Silicon Valley Comes to Cambridge event.

Cambridge Judge Business School’s new Postgraduate

Diploma in Entrepreneurship, which sees its first intake

in September 2011, marks the next step in an enduring

relationship with enterprise and in particular the Cambridge

technology cluster.

no CLuSter iS an iSLand Cambridge Judge Business School

1954 Management Studies at Cambridge University taught in Engineering

department

1986 Management Studies Tripos introduced

1989 Decision to create separate Department of Management Studies

1990 Institute of Management Studies set up under first Director, Professor Stephen

Watson

1991 First intake, 19 MBA and 19 MPhil students; donations from Sir Paul and Lady

Judge and Monument Trust enable Old Addenbrooke’s to be converted

1995 Professor Sandra Dawson becomes Director, oversees completion of building

work and move into Old Addenbrooke’s site

1996 Building officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on March 8th, named the Judge

Institute of Management Studies

1997 Margaret Thatcher Professorship of Enterprise Studies established with

£2million grant from the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, Professor Alan Hughes

becomes first holder of the Chair

1998 Cambridge Programme for Entrepreneurs established

1999 Funding awarded by Science Enterprise Challenge Fund to set up Cambridge

Entrepreneurship Centre and run it for five years

2001 Expansion into space in top floor of building, which had not been converted in

the original building programme

2003 Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (CfEL) splits out of Entrepreneurship Centre

and becomes part of the School, appoints first two Visiting Entrepreneurs,

Karan (now Lord) Bilimoria and Hermann Hauser

2005 Renamed Cambridge Judge Business School

2006 Professor Arnoud de Meyer becomes Director

2009 Expands into Keynes House and buildings on Trumpington Street

2010 Over 55 faculty members, many international, work across seven research

groups, and teach some 750 students annually

2011 Professor Christoph Loch becomes Director

Right: Interior, Judge Business School.

Ben Watkins

BioSCienCe

A school leaver who started his training at ICI and a

graduate from Imperial are among the founding fathers of

the bioscience industry in and around Cambridge. Today,

there are several science and research parks dedicated to

biotech in the region – including the Babraham Research

Campus, which recently announced a £44 million grant

from the government to support bioscience innovation –

but when Sir Christopher Evans, the Imperial graduate,

launched his first company, Enzymatix in 1987, things were

very different.

Enzymatix had a £1.3 million investment from British

Sugar, but despite this, its first home was an old sheep

shed without any sinks. Starting out selling batches of

enzymes for £750 a box to pharmaceutical companies, the

company would go on to develop a form of phospholipid

that helped premature babies to breathe (which Evans

and his colleagues tested on themselves), and a natural

compound that ensured farmed salmon had pink flesh

without the need for chemical dyes. The latter was sold to

Abbott for £4 million.

By 1992, Evans had met Alan Goodman. Goodman had

come to biotech via ICI, Ciba-Geigy, Trebor, Agricultural

Genetics Company and Medeva. He founded Advanced

Technology Management (ATM) in 1992 to invest in and

provide consultancy to biotech businesses, and Enzymatix

was one of ATM’s first clients. Goodman’s advice was

to split the company, which resulted in the formation of

Chiroscience and Celsis. Chiroscience went on to list on

the London Stock Exchange in 1994 with a market cap of

£102 million, then merged with Slough company Celltech

in 1999. The combined company was sold to Belgian

biopharmaceutical company UCB in 2004, while several

ex-employees, including Andy Richards, had already

144

Above: Professor Sir Christopher Evans OBE, in Enzymatix in the Daly Research Laboratories at Babraham.

Left: Alan Goodman, founder and chief executive of Avlar BioVentures Limited, has spearheaded a number of biotechnology companies including Acambis, Oxford BioMedica, Intercytex and CeNes Pharmaceuticals.

gone on to found new companies. Celsis, which focused

on developing enzyme technology to detect microbial

contamination, was listed from 1993 to 1999, when it

was acquired by Chicago company J O Hambro Capital

Management Group.

Goodman and Evans would go on, separately and

sometimes together, to found, co-found and fund numerous

other companies, including Peptide Therapeutics (later

Acambis, sold to Sanofi-Aventis in 2008 for £276 million),

Enviros, Cerebrus, Merlin Ventures, CeNes, Oxford

Biomedica, Amura, Salix and Avlar BioVentures. Evans

even launched a non-biotech company, Toad, which

developed car security systems.

Cambridge University’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology

(LMB) has also played a significant role in the development

of biotech. Set up by the Medical Research Council in 1947,

LMB started out in the Cavendish – conveniently near the

Eagle Pub where Watson and Crick would announce their

discovery of the structure of DNA – and eventually moved

into purpose-built premises on the Addenbrooke’s Hospital

site on the outskirts of Cambridge in 1962. In 2012, LMB

will move into new buildings on the same site, costing

£200 million and partly funded by royalties from antibody

research at the lab.

With 13 LMB scientists sharing 9 Nobel prizes

between them (including Fred Sanger who won twice),

it’s not surprising that several biotech companies have

been founded based on LMB research. Among them are

Domantis, Ribotargets, BioGen and Cambridge Antibody

Technology, CAT, which is now known as MedImmune.

A busy laboratory at MedImmune Cambridge.

CLuSterS, ConSteLLationS and CLoudS Healthcare and Bioscience

What we now know as MedImmune started out as

Cambridge Antibody Technology, CAT, in 1990. Jane Osbourn,

Site Leader for MedImmune in Cambridge and vice president,

research, likes to talk about the nine lives of CAT, from the

founding idea through building the product pipeline and

listing on the London Stock Exchange to today’s presence

as a global drug discovery and development organisation.

Osbourn has been with the company since 1993, when she

joined some 20 fellow employees working at the laboratory

bench. Today, MedImmune Cambridge has over 500

employees and occupies three buildings in Granta Park.

Work by David Chiswell, Greg Winter, John McCafferty

and others in Cambridge University’s Laboratory of

Molecular Biology in the 1980s demonstrated that

human antibody fragments could be created and isolated

using bacteriophages, opening up the possibility of the

therapeutic use of human monoclonal

antibodies. Previous efforts to develop

therapeutic antibodies from mice had

been unsuccessful, so this research

represented a major breakthrough. Winter

and Chiswell, supported by the Medical

Research Council, founded CAT in 1990 to

develop their work into drug products.

CAT spent its fi rst few months in

Winter’s laboratory, before moving to

the Babraham Research Campus. Within

two years, the company had moved

to Melbourn Science Park, where it

grew year by year to eventually occupy

nine buildings. By 2000, another move

was clearly indicated, this time to

two buildings on Granta Park, and in

2008 MedImmune expanded into a third building. In the

meantime, CAT had listed on the London Stock Exchange in

1997, raising £43 million. A secondary fundraising on the

market in 2000 raised a further £93 million, and CAT also

listed on NASDAQ in 2001.

One of the early tasks was to develop the technology

and use it to create an internal product pipeline. Licensing

was seen as one way to build revenue to fund further

development, and numerous licence deals were signed

with a number of pharmaceutical and biotech companies,

including Genzyme, Merck, Monsanto, Pfi zer and Wyeth.

By 1993, CAT had discovered a promising drug

candidate, which they named D2E7. A collaboration

with BASF produced the clinical candidate, which was

christened Adalimumab and began early clinical trials in

1999. Abbott bought BASF’s pharmaceutical division in

2001, and proceeded to take Adalimumab through clinical

trials to FDA approval under the brand name Humira

(Human Monoclonal Antibody in Rheumatoid Arthritis)

in 2002.

146

Left: David Chiswell, former CEO of Cambridge Antibody Technology.

medimmune

In 2003, CAT initiated legal proceedings challenging

the level of royalties Abbott was paying on sales of Humira.

The resulting court case found for CAT in December 2004,

but the situation was only resolved when the two sides

settled shortly before an appeal hearing. The litigation had

depressed CAT’s share price, preventing the company’s

proposed purchase of Oxford GlycoSciences in 2003. Humira

became a ‘blockbuster’ – more than $1 billion in annual sales

– in 2005, and global sales exceeded $5 billion in 2009.

The resolution of the Abbott royalty case freed

CAT to proceed with an alliance with AstraZeneca. The

alliance had an ambitious scope of 25 projects over five

years focused on respiratory diseases and inflammation.

An innovative partnership structure was created which

promoted joint collaborative discovery and development,

and shared funding and management.

AstraZeneca made a strategic decision to move into

biologics two years later. Their experience of working with

CAT in the alliance, in retrospect a form of practical due

diligence, made CAT the obvious choice for an acquisition,

but CAT in return, knowing they needed a strategic partner

because they did not have the resources to fund clinical

development, spoke to several other big pharma companies

and conducted their own due diligence on AstraZeneca,

visiting their research centre at Alderley Park. The eventual

result was that AstraZeneca bought CAT for £702 million

in 2006.

In 2007, AstraZeneca announced it had bought US

company MedImmune for over $15 billion. Merging the new

acquisition with CAT created a single biologics division,

combining MedImmune’s manufacturing capacity and drug

development pipeline with CAT’s antibody libraries and

expertise in drug discovery. The resulting organisation took

the MedImmune name because of its wider recognition in

the important American market.

MedImmune’s Cambridge operations focus on drug

discovery to proof of concept (Phase II). The number of

employees has increased by over 50% in the last two years,

as the company builds its capacity to develop promising

biologic drug candidates.

CLuSterS, ConSteLLationS and CLoudS Healthcare and Bioscience

Left: A teaspoon of the CAT library containing 100 billion medicines, part of the MedImmune technology portfolio. Right: A vial of CAT libraries can contain up to 1011 antibodies.

PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY TO SAVE ON THE RETAIL PRICE ANDHAVE YOUR NAME LISTED IN THE BOOK AS A SUBSCRIBER

about Cambridge Phenomenon Ltd

Cambridge Phenomenon Ltd, founded by entrepreneur Charles Cotton

in 2009, has been set up to acknowledge the people, organisations,

products, events and initiatives behind Cambridge’s unique information

technology, bioscience and medical cluster. Our current initiatives

have all been stimulated by the 50th anniversary of the Cambridge

Phenomenon in 2010.

Cambridge Phenomenon Ltd Board of directors

Charles Cotton, Chris Chapman, Theodoros Koutroukides, Joelle du Lac,

Christopher Saunders, Jeff Solomon and Teri Willey.

the editor

Kate Kirk has been a freelance editor and writer for more than 20 years.

She has worked for international organizations, think tanks, specialist

publishers and several leading European business schools. She grew up

in Cambridge and has close family ties to the Phenomenon.

about tmi

Third Millennium Information (TMI) Ltd is the leading publisher of

high-quality illustrated books celebrating great institutions.

At Cambridge TMI has published books with ten colleges and also

the offi cial publication for the University’s anniversary celebrations –

The University of Cambridge: an 800th Anniversary Portrait.

III www.tmiltd.com

Third Millennium Information, 2–5 Benjamin Street, London EC1M 5QL

T: +44 (0)20 7336 0144 / F: +44 (0)20 7608 1188 /

E: cambridgephenomenon@tmiltd.com

order copies in advance, and make sure you or your company become part of this enduring record.

Subscribe £45 plus p&p (one copy and your name listed in the

book)

Supporter £225 plus p&p (5 copies and company logo listed on

the Supporters page)

Sponsor £1,350 free delivery (30 copies, company logo on

the end papers, logo listed on the Sponsors page)

Patron £4,500 free delivery (100 copies, customised dust

jacket, own text on the inside front and back fl aps,

logo listed on the Patrons page)

Order online at www.cambridgephenomenon.com

or visit the Third Millennium Publishing website at www.tmiltd.com

(see The Cambridge Phenomenon under Forthcoming Titles). The retail

price of the book after publication will be £50.00.

If you would like to fi nd out more about the Patron opportunity, please

contact Charles Cotton on charles.cotton@cambridgephenomenon.com

advisory Board

Gerald Avison

Alan Barrell

Billy Boyle

Nigel Brown

Matthew Bullock

Deborah Cadman

David Cleevely

Charles Cotton

Sherry Coutu

Neil Davidson

Warren East

Harriet Fear

Elizabeth Garnsey

David Gill

Prof Lynn Gladden

Hermann Hauser

Walter Herriot

Jack Lang

Mike Lynch

Sir Michael Marshall

Bill Mason

Tim Minshall

Andy Richards

Robert Sansom

Christopher Saunders

Sally Simmons

Chris Smart

Prof Michael Thorne

Alex van Someren

Shai Vyakarnam

Bill Wicksteed