During the dotcom boom, when technology innovation appeared to offer a solution to almost any structural economic woe, government technology strategists from as far away as Brazil, Canada, China and Singapore made a pilgrimage to the fenlands in the southeast of England. They travelled in the hope that if they could just understand the "Cambridge Phenomenon," they would be able to recreate its success in emerging technology hubs elsewhere. It turned out that Cambridge wasn't about to hand out a recipe for recreating its Phenomenon. Being able to describe how this formerly agrarian economy, centered on a 795-year-old university, has become a hotbed of technological innovation does not mean it is easy to replicate.
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