Silicon Valley has long set the pace for tech innovation. In deep tech however, US companies have a tendency to design and optimise their products for local consumers and systems that do not translate globally.
Their vast domestic market and deep-pocketed investors let them sustain this approach for years, but this narrowing of focus creates an opening for Europe’s innovators, especially in the UK.
Too often, UK founders and investors mimic the US model rather than exploit its blind spots. Yet Europe’s fragmented markets and tighter constraints demand innovation from first principles, not incremental tweaks.
There are examples, such as ARM’s power-efficient chip architecture and the GSM mobile standard, where this put Europe a generation or two ahead of US companies focused on incremental improvements at the time. When you cannot rely on scale to paper over inefficiencies, you build technology that is more adaptable, resilient, and globally relevant….
