Cambridge’s innovation ecosystem generates world-leading research and global enterprise, but faces a structural paradox: high efficiency for established insiders paired with steep barriers to entry for outsiders. In a new policy paper, Dr Konstantina Stamati argues that the ecosystem requires a strategy of "coordination without centralisation" – a minimal governance feedback layer that embeds transparency into existing selection mechanisms.
Cambridge is exceptionally good at innovation.
Its universities generate world-leading research. Its entrepreneurs build globally significant companies. Its investors connect local firms to international capital. Its networks bring together researchers, founders, investors, businesses and policymakers in ways that have made Cambridge one of the world’s most successful innovation ecosystems.
But there is a paradox at the heart of that success. The ecosystem works brilliantly for people who already know how to navigate it but remains surprisingly difficult to enter for those who do not. Opportunities can depend on introductions. Progression can depend on sponsorship and reputation. Investment decisions can rely on relationships that are invisible to those outside established networks. And while Cambridge generates substantial economic value, we have limited visibility over how much of that value is captured locally and by whom.
This is not an argument that Cambridge lacks good people or good programmes. It is an argument about how the system works — and what it would take to change it.
The problem is not a lack of commitment
As part of my Executive MBA research at the Cambridge Judge Business School, I interviewed 12 people working across the Cambridge innovation ecosystem: university and research leaders, investors, founders, intermediaries and public-sector actors. A striking pattern emerged across those conversations — people cared about inclusion.
There are programmes designed to widen participation, develop skills, support entrepreneurs and connect people to opportunities. There is considerable institutional commitment to making Cambridge’s innovation economy more inclusive. Yet those efforts do not necessarily add up to system-level change. The reason is that inclusion is often treated as something an individual organisation or programme can deliver. But participation in an innovation ecosystem does not happen within one organisation.
A university provides skills. An accelerator provides access. An investor provides capital. An employer provides a job. An intermediary makes connections. Each can make rational decisions within its own sphere. But the experience of someone moving through the ecosystem depends on how those decisions interact. That is where the problem begins. The same mechanisms that make the ecosystem efficient for established participants (networks, reputation, relational trust and informal knowledge) can make it harder for newcomers to enter. As one intermediary put it, there are “many doors, but few visible handles”. This is a coordination problem. The ecosystem is highly interdependent, but there are few mechanisms through which that interdependence is collectively governed.
The system produces the outcomes
Much existing inclusion activity operates downstream of the core innovation process: providing skills, improving employment access, supporting entrepreneurship, or seeking to distribute some of the benefits of growth.
These interventions matter. But they do not necessarily change the upstream processes through which opportunities are created, selected and allocated. If access to entrepreneurship depends on networks, if investment depends on relationships, and if progression depends on informal sponsorship, then downstream interventions alone cannot resolve the problem. Inclusion has to be designed into the processes through which the ecosystem operates. It needs to become a system function, not simply a programme objective. This is an important shift in perspective. It moves the question from “what programmes should we create to include more people?” to “how does the ecosystem decide who gets access, who progresses, who receives capital, and who benefits?” Those are governance questions.
Cambridge does not need centralisation. It needs coordination
There are good reasons why Cambridge’s innovation ecosystem is decentralised. No single institution controls it, and imposing hierarchical direction would risk undermining the autonomy and experimentation that contribute to its strength.
But decentralisation does not have to mean fragmentation.
The policy brief, Governing Inclusive Innovation in the Cambridge Ecosystem proposes a strategy of coordination without centralisation and calls for a minimal governance layer that creates shared visibility, introduces transparency at key decision points, and enables collective accountability, without telling individual actors what decisions to make.
In practice, this would mean flagship accelerators and programmes publishing clear entry and selection criteria; investors explaining how decisions are made and where pipelines narrow; employers signalling what skills are valued and what progression routes look like; and anchor institutions tracking simple indicators of local value capture alongside aggregate growth.
None of these are radical asks. They do not impose quotas. They do not require a central authority. They do not remove discretion from organisations making difficult decisions under uncertainty. What they do is reduce unnecessary opacity and create shared reference points across an otherwise fragmented system. The objective is not to standardise decisions. It is to make the conditions under which decisions are made more visible. That creates the possibility of coordination without control.
From good intentions to clearer rules of the game
One of the most revealing comments in the research was this: “We don’t need more programmes — we need clearer rules of the game.” That does not mean programmes are unnecessary. It means that programmes cannot, on their own, change the system in which they operate. A person can encounter relatively small barriers at several points, finding the right opportunity, understanding the criteria, obtaining an introduction, progressing after an initial placement, securing investment, and experience those barriers as one large structural obstacle. This is why system-level visibility matters. If we can see where people enter, where they drop out, and where opportunities narrow, we can begin to ask different questions about intervention.
Cambridge has a choice about what happens next
Cambridge’s innovation economy is receiving increasing policy attention, while the wider governance arrangements of Cambridgeshire are evolving. That creates a window of opportunity to establish better coordination before existing patterns become more deeply entrenched. The choice is not between decentralisation and inclusion. It is between fragmented decentralisation and coordinated decentralisation.
Cambridge does not need to solve everything at once. It could begin with a minimum viable governance layer: agree on a small number of shared indicators, pilot greater transparency at selected access and decision points, map the information that already exists, and establish a forum in which actors can compare experience and learn from one another. If that works, it can expand.
The objective is not a new bureaucracy. It is a feedback system. Data makes patterns visible. Transparency makes decisions more navigable. Convening allows actors to respond. That is how coordination can emerge without central control.
Cambridge has already demonstrated that it can build one of the world’s most successful innovation ecosystems. The next challenge is to govern that success so that more people can participate in creating it, more people can progress through it, and more of the value it generates can be seen and understood.
Good intentions matter. But intentions are not governance.
The missing layer is not another programme or another institution. It is a small amount of shared infrastructure (indicators, transparency and convening) that allows autonomous actors to coordinate without being controlled. That infrastructure is within reach. The question is whether Cambridge’s universities, investors, intermediaries and public bodies are willing to build it together.
The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the Bennett School of Public Policy.
