Who are the entrepreneurs of Silicon Roundabout?
Benjamin Soutworth deputy CEO of TCIO, a public body that was set up to help grow and promote Tech City says “Equally, one of Tech City’s strengths is the interplay between what people have historically called ‘creative’ and ‘technical’ industries. We at Tech City believe that these distinctions are less relevant in an increasingly integrated world.”
“tech should not be siloed into being only one thing”. He says: “At Tech City, our focus is to nurture, support, and celebrate the development of entrepreneurs, the go-getters and business builders determined to strike out and succeed on their own.”
Digital Shoreditch celebrates the outstanding creative, technical and entrepreneurial talent of Tech City. The Digital Shoreditch festival explores the many companies and organisations that make Tech City what it is. Focusing on developing new ways to exploit the potential for growing global engagement and improving our digital economy and society.
London and in particular East London is fast becoming a global focal point for new startups and forward thinking tech-based organisations. If we can define it, we can encourage the area’s reputation within the tech communities as an emerging hotbed of innovative and entrepreneurial spirit.
Rory Sutherland on Digital Shoreditch
“Most marketing information previously was attitudinal data not behavioural data finally what we’re starting to see is some very surprising revelations about how people make choices, how people establish preferences and how you can influence behaviour whether at an unconscious or conscious level.”
Keynote speech – “The digital world with the data it produces and the behaviors it evokes has become a sort of galapagos islands”
Monetisation Strategies
Tech City is expanding away from the Silicon Roundabout and now reaches as far as the new Kings Cross development to the North, Farringdon to the west and Tech City East out to Stratford in order to reuse the legacy from the Olympics. All points south are restricted by the high office rents of the financial district which starts from Finsbury Square, Moorgate.
In terms of highly skilled resources, London has always been the “go to” destination, however what has changed is that fresh talent are not incentivised to work for a top tier investment bank or high end law firm. These resources have tremendous intellectual firepower which is now channelled to creating and sustaining their own business rather than become stuck in company man/woman or wage slave default mode.
The area has all the ingredients such that when the tech and creative forces collide there will be a new brand of innovation that puts London at the centre of the new digital world map.
Final word from Kam Star, founder of Digital Shoreditch and Chief Play Officer for Playgen, gives his view on how universities can support entrepreneurship and job creation.
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