No CES please we're British - UK innovators explain the lack of UK-made wearables in Vegas

Less VC funding means less focus on short-term growth and more on long-term value

There is a big difference between the tech start-up cultures in the UK and the US, both in the way that small firms are funded in their early days and in their aspirations for independence. This has resulted in UK start-ups being focused more on software and infrastructure and less on the sort of personal technology exemplified by the array of shiny new wearables on show at CES this week.

Interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Jessica Bland, technology futures analyst at UK innovation foundation and charity Nesta, said that UK firms are less reliant on venture capital than their US counterparts.

"As a percentage of GDP [venture capital investment] is almost double in America," she said, citing a report put out by Nesta in 2014.

This, Bland said, makes it less likely that a UK start-up will have its eye on acquisition by a giant like Google or Microsoft from the outset, as is so often the case in the US, and this leads to a focus on different areas.

"The model for creating a small company that is likely to exit into a big company is much more prevalent in America, but in the UK we also have a difference in the kind of thing that we are creating. The tech companies here are often not as gadget focused, not like the kind of thing we see at CES."

Fran Bennett, CEO and co-founder of UK big data specialists Mastadon C, agreed.

"We are quite happy to remain independent and continue to grow and be successful by ourselves," she explained.

"In the UK it is much more common to say 'we would like to grow value and retain independence'."

Much of the innovation on display at CES is hardware based, whereas software companies require far fewer resources to get up and running.

"The start-up costs of a software company are so low nowadays that it really is possible to build something independently quite successfully," Bennett said.

Nesta's Bland said the fact that funding is more likely in the UK to come from government or from some form of public private partnership such as Catapult Centres has had a bearing on the technology developed.

"In the UK we have Catapult Centres and they really help technology companies with things like infrastructure technologies that will change our transport systems and our energy systems, which is quite a different form of technology to the smartwatches and pedometers you see over in Las Vegas this week."

In spite of the ongoing skills shortage in some areas, which Bennett said the government is addressing by introducing technology at an early age and promoting computer science as a valid career path, the future of the UK technology sector is bright, she believes.

"I think the UK tech economy is very healthy, and I'm very excited about our prospects. We're also seeing a fantastic start-up scene in the UK so I'm very optimistic," she said.