Erik Abrahamsson grew up in rural southern Sweden and worked for tech start-ups in Singapore before returning to full-time study on an MBA programme. He does not think he could have found a better location than Oxford, where he completed his masters degree, to launch his own venture, a data analytics business for the insurance sector called Digital Fineprint.
“To start a successful company you need to be close to knowledgeable people and Oxford has some of the greatest talent in the world,” Mr Abrahamsson says.
Incubating new companies at universities from ideas hatched by students is still best done in the US. All but one of the 10 top MBA programmes, in terms of the number of new entrepreneurs they produce, are found in the US, according to Pitchbook, the private equity research company.