Oxford

Productivity hotspot with £1.1 billion digital tech GVA and £154k turnover per employee

£1.8 bnDigital tech business turnover (2017)
MatureDominant distribution of businesses by age (2017)
£154 kDigital tech turnover by employee (2017)
106Digital tech business births (2016)
£1.1 bnGVA
(2017)
11,821Jobs in digital tech sector
(2017)
25,637Digital tech jobs
(2017)

Developments

The city’s tech sector is closely connected to, and often funded by, the University of Oxford, which supports companies at all stages of growth, from idea to spin-out. Student-led entrepreneurship societies are also an active and critical component of this well-established ecosystem.

  • Oxford University Innovation (OUI) has completed the 150th spin-out from Oxford University with Augmented Reality company 6Degrees, which is also notable for being the first Oxford University business to begin life on the other side of the Atlantic.
  • Greater Change – a social enterprise startup aiming to enable the public to make secure, cashless donations to the homeless – has successfully raised £33,000 on the University’s crowdfunding platform, OxReach, with support from OUI. Its app is now in development and a trial is due to begin in the city this year. Oxford’s tech sector has seen rapid growth in such social enterprise startups.
  • The Oxford Foundry, an entrepreneurial hub at the heart of Oxford University, was opened by Tim Cook in October 2017. The venue aims to create a community of innovation across the University, inspiring and supporting its 23,000 students to develop entrepreneurial skills or to create and scale commercial ventures.

Dr Thomas Evans

CEO, Vaccitech

About Vaccitech
Vaccitech is a spin-out company from the University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute. Vaccitech is engaged in Phase 2 clinical programs for universal influenza and prostate cancer, Phase 1 for MERS, and preclinical programs for 3 other therapeutic infectious diseases indications.

Why Oxford?
At the Oxford Science Park close to our founders at the Jenner Institute, and co-located with several other biotechnology companies. This allows for a critical mass of scientists and entrepreneurs.

National & International focus
We work with manufacturers, investigators, and other companies in Europe, Asia (China), Australia and the US. We consider ourselves a global company in both perspective and scope.

Founded: 2016

Raised: £30m

Popular meetups in Oxford

1,306 members

UX Oxford

783 members

JSOxford

Community perceptions survey findings

The Tech Nation 2018 Survey was conducted between January 2018 and February 2018, in partnership with Streetbees. This year’s survey received the largest response yet from members of the UK tech community. In a total of 3,428 submissions, people told us about the opportunities and challenges their local ecosystems face, and the digital tech leaders they admire. The majority of respondents (33%) were founders and CEOs.

What Oxford startups say is a strength

1Proximity of a university
2Access to talent
3Helpful tech community

What Oxford startups say is a challenge

1Cost of living
2Too close to business hubs
3Access to talent

Tech Nation 2018 is now open!

Great news. All data featured in the 2018 Tech Nation Report is available online for non-commercial use by third parties.  The data can be accessed through the data.world platform. If you use the data, please let us know. We would love to showcase your work.

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