Geojorum. Vol. 26. No. 1, pp. 49-64. 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain 001&7185/95 $9.50+0.00 zyxwvutsrqpo 001~7185(94)00022-0 Competitive Time-Space in High Technology* NICK HENRY,? Birmingham, U.K. and DOREEN MASSEYJ. Milton Keynes, U.K. Abstract: The ‘Cambridge Phenomenon’-the growth of R&D based high tech- nology industry in Cambridge during the 1980s~is an economic success story of the new times. As a study of the work organisation of the scientist/engineers of Cambridge, this paper reveals the extreme rime-space zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPO flexibilify experienced by these workers. It reveals also how this flexible use of time and space is essential in the internationally competitive success of high technology industry in Cambridge. The paper ends with a critical look ahead at some of the implications and contradictions of this particular form of growth both for the economy and this set of elite workers. Introduction The economic restructuring of the last decade has reshaped the economic geography of the U.K. Argu- ments abound over the reformulated nature of the North-South divide but there is general recognition of the ‘boom’ which was experienced by the south and east of England during the late eighties. One of the dynamics behind this boom was high technology industry and, by the end of the decade, the ‘south- east’ represented the U.K.‘s premier high technology region both in terms of numbers of high technology workers and in terms of the proportion of high status high technology employees to be found in the region’ (Begg and Cameron, 1987,1988; Keeble, 1988; Mar- tin, 1988; Morgan and Sayer, 1988). Within the re- gion, this high technology growth has been associated with a variety of localities, none more so than Cam- *The research is funded by the ESRC project number RCKlO-23-3004: “High status growth? Aspects of home and work around high technology sectors”. tlecturer in Human Geography, School of Geography, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston B15 2TT, U.K. *Professor of Geography, Faculty of Social Sciences, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, U.K. bridge, whose rapid growth has been lionised in the story of the ‘Cambridge Phenomenon’ (Segal et al., 1985). Between 1981 and 1984, Cambridgeshire recorded the largest volume (5,000) and the third fastest rate of high technology employment growth in Britain. The Cambridge TTWA experienced 37% growth amounting to 3,800 new jobs (Keeble, 1989). By 1989, Cambridge had over 10,000 jobs in high tech- nology industry (Massey and Henry, 1992) and the county around 23,000 high technology employees (Garnsey and Cannon-Brookes, 1992). Furthermore, this employment growth is part of a functional, as well as sectoral, spatial division of labour whereby high technology Cambridge has become renowned as a centre of research and development rather than of physical production (Garnsey and Cannon-Brookes, 1992; Keeble, 1989). In 1984, Segal et al. (1985) highlighted that a quarter of all high technology jobs created by the Phenomenon were in the high-status scientific engineering occupations. In 1986, a Cam- bridge City Council (1986) report put the figure at 47% as against 12% of occupations in conventional manufacturing and a recent study by Moore and Sedeghat (1991) produced a similar figure of 41% of 49