West Coast tech hub? Don’t you mean the West Country?

Hannah Prevett looks at the booming science community in Bristol and Bath, home to everything from film and media to drones and microchips
Col Needham launched the Internet Movie Database in 1990, becoming a pacesetter for the technology cluster that  ranges from software to bionic hands
Col Needham launched the Internet Movie Database in 1990, becoming a pacesetter for the technology cluster that ranges from software to bionic hands
ADRIAN SHERRATT/THE TIMES

It seems as “California” as they come, an idea and a business so focused on Hollywood that it has become a film industry bible, essential to any self-respecting actor, agent, director or fan. Yet IMDb’s roots are far from Los Angeles or even the high-tech hotbed to the north, San Francisco and Silicon Valley. It was, in fact, born in Bristol, a child of one of the world’s great, and greatly unknown, technology clusters.

That, however, may be about to change. Bristol and Bath, far from the more fashionable British hubs of Silicon Roundabout and Silicon Fen, is intent on showing the world that there is more to the southwest than cream teas and scrumpy. Think M4 corridor and university graduates, innovators and entrepreneurs.

One