Bristol and Bath have assets that could be the next big international disruptor
THE Bristol and Bath city region is home to global brands, household names and major corporates including financial services giant Hargreaves Lansdown and supercomputer and cloud specialists like Cray and Oracle; aerospace giants Airbus and Rolls Royce; fast-growth companies like Strava, the number-one app for cyclists and runners and Just Eat, the online food order and delivery service; and media giants Aardman Animations and the BBC Natural History Unit of Attenborough and Life on Earth fame.
They are joined by an abundance of home-grown and fast-emerging dynamic companies including Graphcore, a leading AI processing specialist; Green Hedge, a leading developer and operator of low carbon electricity generation; Ultrahaptics which is leading the way in applying touch sensation to interac- tion with computer application. And University of Bristol spin-out Ziylo, recently bought out for what could be as much as $800m, has discovered a molecule thought to be the ‘holy grail’ of insulin that could offer ground-breaking treatment for diabetics.
Such is the innovation buzz in the city region that the authors made a comparison with Seattle. The North American tech powerhouse shares similar characteristics to the two cities, including its innovation roots being founded in the aerospace industry as the birthplace of Boeing. Seattle is a place where start-ups can take advantage of a close knit ecosystem which fosters collaboration, which in turn supports them to grow to medium size and beyond; even to a scale where they become next technology disruptor, such as Amazon, Microsoft or Expedia.