EMMA Swift led the research which found Bournemouth and Poole had the fastest-growing digital economy in the country.

During a visit to Bournemouth, she said it was clear local companies are not disadvantaged by being outside the capital.

“Talking to some of the companies here, they’re all servicing the same kind of clients that the companies in London are servicing. They’re not missing out,” she says.

One company she spoke to was doing most of its business in the US. “Eighty per cent of their customers are in the States but they’re running the business in Bournemouth. That money is coming back into Bournemouth,” she said.

The attractiveness of the surroundings in Dorset doesn’t hurt when it comes to attracting talent. “Let’s not overlook the beach thing,” she said.

Ms Swift is head of the Cluster Alliance at Tech City UK, the body which released the Tech Nation report in February.

The report – with a foreword by the Prime Minister – found Bournemouth and Poole had the fastest-growing digital economy in the country, with a 212 per cent growth in the number of start-ups in the sector since 2010.

The sector employed 7,272 people, it said, and 83 per cent of businesses in the area felt there was a strong network of entrepreneurs to share ideas and experience.

The top three areas of expertise in the industry locally were advertising and marketing; e-commerce; and game development and products.

Set up in 2012 in the East End of London to help digital businesses grow, Tech City UK now works across the nation.

“We work on two levels – to support ‘clusters’ across the UK and try to provide resources, and in terms of being a voice to government, making sure companies’ voices are heard,” said Ms Swift.

Last year, it created the Digital Business Academy, offering free online business courses with experts from UCL, Cambridge Judge Business School and Founder Centric.

“This is stuff Cambridge is charging thousands of pounds for and we’ve been able to get this content on line for free,” said Ms Swift.

“We try to get programmes that are available to support companies in every stage of their growth.

“It’s available for anybody to use. It’s for anybody who wants to grow a digital business, maybe start one, or explore the area.”

She added: “Part of my role is to spend a lot of time travelling across the UK and meeting different companies, making sure we’re aware of what’s going on.

“It’s very easy to listen to one community in London about what problems are. Different places have different issues. It’s about making sure we have a very national view and it’s helpful to us because we’re able to see what things are working in different places and what aren’t.”

One common concern is the difficulty of finding a flow of recruits.

“Talent is an issue everywhere. That’s a nationwide problem,” she said.

“It’s something that we’re aware of, that the government are aware of as well.”

She added: “This industry moves so fast and it’s so hard to make sure our education system is keeping up.”

With so many start-ups in a short time, is there a likelihood that many will fall by the wayside?

“Failure isn’t necessarily a bad thing. London has thee highest failure rate in the UK,” says Ms Swift.

She pointed out that in Silicon Valley, they hold failure conferences, where people share what they learned from the businesses that did not take flight.

“The British have a really weird attitude to failure – it’s like, ‘If I fail once, this isn’t for me',” she added.

The digital economy grew despite the recession and is proving resilient.

“Half the companies began after the crash. It’s very much an opportunistic industry,” she said.

“Some people who start companies have left the corporate world and they’ve taught themselves some of the skills.”

She said the sector locally was around the same size as in Liverpool. And with headlines in all the national newspapers from the Tech Nation report, Bournemouth and Poole were poised to capitalise on the research.

“Bournemouth is really exciting,” she said.