America’s Silicon Valley is a major force that dominates the global tech market and brings in Billions of dollars to the US economy with its collection of high tech company and innovative start-ups all jostling for space in the South Bay portion of Bay Area, California.
It’s no wonder then that many countries want to emulate the success of Silicon Valley and several European countries are taking massive strides towards this goal with innovation and incentives in place designed to encourage the sort of start-ups that frequent Silicon Valley in their own countries.
One such country throwing their hat into the ring is Great Britain who have a great history with tech innovation and creation, with such luminaries as Alan Turing, Sir Tim Berners Lee and Sir Clive Sinclair all hailing from British shores. Britain is now trying to capitalise on this historic relevance and re-establish itself within global tech circles by encouraging more entrepreneurship in this field.
Cambridge has long been touted as the next Silicon Valley due to the ability to tap into the rich vein of talent emerging from one of the world’s oldest and best established Universities. Since the opening of the Science Park in the 1970’s start-ups and investment have continued to roll into the city on the back of the production of medical technology.
It’s not just Cambridge trying to mark itself out for tech supremacy in the country as London also wants a piece of the action. In an attempt to rejuvenate run-down areas of East London, the British government launched its tech-city initiative which offers guidance, support and benefits to tech companies looking to set up in the area.
But it’s not just Britain looking to break America’s tech monopoly as Germany have found themselves with young innovators flooding to Berlin due to its cultural heritage, bustling music and arts scene, its reputation for being a laid-back city and its low rents. European tech companies like SoundCloud is an established web start-up that was founded in Sweden but has now moved to Berlin because of the burgeoning talent in the city.
With Europe preparing to take on the might of America, and offering incentives to do so, now may well be the time to try a tech start-up within the EU.