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Entrepreneurship and technology Where’s Britain’s Bill Gates? Britain’s government cannot conjure a technology giant out of thin air. But it can help Aug 6th 2011 | from the print edition ?Tweet MEET the British Bill Gates. He studied computer science at Cambridge—dropping out to start his career in nearby “Silicon Fen”. Then he launched his own start-up, based at “Silicon Roundabout”, a new hub of tech firms in east London. Bolstered by finance from the City, he resisted the lure of a foreign takeover, ultimately listing on the London Stock Exchange. It is a plausible biography—given the necessary addition of animal spirits—but an imaginary one. Britain has no digital equivalent of the 18th-century industrial innovators who turned technology into commercial leadership. Its more recent prowess in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology has not been emulated in the digital sphere. David Cameron’s government should ponder this failure and address the reasons for it. Luck is one of them, but so are national and European regulations and a tepid climate for entrepreneurs. In this section Rearranging the deckchairs Time for a double dip? Bring the Islamists in Cleaner, not cooler Of development and dictators ?Where’s Britain’s Bill Gates? Reprints A nation of digital shopkeepers Britain has one of the biggest online economies. Its researchers invented both the web and the computer. It has the English language—which helps to link it with California’s Silicon Valley and Indian high-tech—and great universities. There are thriving tech clusters in Bristol, London and elsewhere (see article). More so than other European countries, Britain should be competing with America as a tech leader. Yet it has nurtured relatively few big tech companies and no huge ones. In particular, Britain has vanishingly few “platform” firms—ie, the sort that, like Microsoft, Google or Facebook, have built and marketed a service or piece of software on which other businesses and applications rely.