The ability of Cambridge’s best companies to spin out aspects of their non-core technology, to cross-fertilise IP with kindred businesses and to corporate venture at every opportunity will be vital to the sustainability of the local cluster.
Evidence of this already happening underpins the newly updated Killer50 list published by Business Weekly today. Killer50 is Business Weekly’s take on the 50 most disruptive technologies in the East of England and sees several changes from the January 2011 elite.
Any ‘Killer’ deemed to have lost its cutting edge is demoted – and several have fallen by the wayside. And several companies plucked from our Ones2Watch ‘nursery’ – companies we are tipping to be globally successful – have taken advantage and become fully-fledged ‘Killers.’
The dynamic nature of the process is designed to ensure that the fruit of technologies doesn’t wither on the vine.
Autonomy Corporation encapsulates this dynamism, exerting enormous influence on the latest Killer50. Not only is the parent company continuing its internationally successful progress, but also the tentacles of its technology pervade the pantheon.
Aurasma, the Cambridge augmented reality company and a division of Autonomy, breaks into the Killer50 for the first time. Also there is Autonomy spin-out blinkx. And Autonomy CEO, Dr Mike Lynch, is also on the board of FeatureSpace, a young Cambridge business of which great things are expected.
ARM Holdings is another Cambridge-based world leader whose investments, corporate venturing and spin-out technologies are starting to spread throughout Killer50. ARM is there in its own right. It is a substantial investor in Amantys and its processor technology is at the heart of Cognovo.
Notable newcomers are Bromium, co-founded by two of the XenSource pioneers and still officially in stealth mode, and wireless company Neul whose CEO is CSR co-founder James Collier and which has a global opportunity to emulate CSR with its expertise in the new whitespace spectrum.
• Photograph shows: Autonomy CEO, Dr Mike Lynch
