Silicon Fen pioneers Cambridge Consultants celebrate 50 years
Cambridge Consultants, the company described as "experts of disruptive technologies" by the Financial Times, and one of the key catalysts in the growth of what has become known as the Cambridge Cluster of high tech companies, is celebrating its 50th year of operations.
It was set up by three University of Cambridge graduates in 1960 and has grown into a world leading technology product development firm, employing over 300 engineers, technologists and scientists at offices in Cambridge, UK and Boston, US.
It is now part of Altran, the European-based innovation and high tech consulting firm, which in 2008 generated a turnover of €1,650m.
Cambridge Consultants's work for large multinationals and early stage start ups has covered a wide field. It ranges from the round tea bag, to the ground-to-air radio system used to control air traffic in US airspace; and from the mobile phone Bluetooth chips, to the ultra low-cost optoelectronics in a pregnancy testing kit.
Its effect can also be seen in the wealth created by the 20 businesses it has spun out since 1975, including CSR, the world's largest manufacturer of Bluetooth chips, and Xaar, Domino and Inca Digital, three of the world's leading companies, founded on ink jet printing technology originally conceived at Cambridge Consultants. Combined, these four spin outs employ 3,500 people and generated more than $1billion in revenue in 2008.
CEO Brian Moon said: "1960 was a time of great social, cultural and technological change.
"JFK had won the US presidency and thrown down a challenge to his country's scientists to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. The effect of this challenge was felt around the world, and almost certainly inspired our founders to create a business that aimed initially to provide British industry with ready access to a new breed of highly qualified, forward-thinking, recently graduated technologists."
Cambridge Consultants was forged in the "white heat" of [Then UK prime Minister] Harold Wilson's technological revolution, and has remained at the leading-edge of technology innovation to this day.
With about 60% of its business coming from the US and Asia, Cambridge Consultants has matured into a global business, developing more inhalers than any pharmaceutical company, leading the way for smart energy management, and housing one of the world's largest independent wireless development teams.
To launch the company's 50th anniversary celebrations, Cambridge Consultants looked - as usual - to the future, asking a class of 10 year olds at the Milton Road Primary School in Cambridge to write a diary entry for a typical day in 2060, when they would be 60 years old. The children were asked to focus particularly on the part that technology may play in their lives in fifty years time.
Amongst the nuclear powered hover-cars, robo-doctors dispensing spray-able medicines and holographic phone displays was the constant theme of climate change which, in many of the diary entries, had yet to be fully solved.
"We have come very far in the last fifty years and should be very proud of our achievements", Dr Moon said.
"But I, like the children in our competition, suspect that we have more challenging times ahead of us. As we seek technological solutions to some of the world's most pressing and urgent needs, the watchwords will be efficiency, simplicity and renewability.
"But one thing we can be sure of is that the world is not running out of technology."
