NESTA: London tops list of best EU cities for digital entrepreneurs

London is the best city in Europe for digital entrepreneurs, according to a new index that measures what startups and scale-ups¹ say is important to them.

The European Digital City Index, is launched by Nesta as part of its work on the European Digital Forum, a project with the Lisbon Council to promote the digital economy.

The Index measures and ranks the EU’s capital cities and known digital innovation hubs² against ten criteria set by digital businesses³, and supported by policymakers and academics. The criteria relate to a city’s ecosystem and include digital infrastructure, culture, and skills availability.

The European Digital City Index reveals that London scores highest overall for startups and scale-ups and specifically for access to capital, entrepreneurial culture and knowledge spillovers. Across all ten criteria its lowest score is for lifestyle which assesses standard and cost of living. Other UK cities that feature on the list include Cambridge and Oxford which appear 11th and 13th respectively for startups and scale-ups.

Chris Haley, Head of Startups and New Technology Research at Nesta, comments: “Entrepreneurship, particularly digital entrepreneurship, is vitally important for innovation and growth but not all cities provide equally fertile ground for these businesses. Our research indicates that location does matter, and illustrates the ways in which top cities create a supportive environment and where lessons can be learnt.” 

Available to search at www.digitalcityindex.eu the Index is intended to help entrepreneurs identify the strengths and weaknesses of a particular city and help policymakers understand where they need to devote more resources to make a city more attractive to digital businesses. Entrepreneurs can also personalise their search by applying more or less weight to each criteria.

The Index will be updated in 2016 and expanded to include more EU cities.

Go to the NESTA website for more information about the Digital City Index and the listed Top Ten Cities for Digital Entrepreneurs.

Footnotes:

1. Scale-ups are defined in the European Digital City Index as rapidly growing businesses with at least ten employees.

2. Non-capital cities included in the European Digital City Index are Barcelona, Cambridge, Cologne, Milan, Munich, Oxford, Stuttgart.

3. More than 90 digital entrepreneurs, policy researchers and academics helped determine what the European Digital City Index criteria should be.