The tech industry has long perpetuated a myth: you're either a 'people person' or a 'tech person'. These past few years Manchester has become a progressive digital hub in the UK and somehow marries the two incredibly well.
The Hidden Cost of the Divide
Research from Manchester Digital's recent skills report shows that 67% of tech businesses struggle with internal communication between technical and commercial teams. That's not just an HR headache – it's directly impacting bottom lines. When your DevOps team can't effectively communicate wins to the sales floor, or when account managers promise features that engineers haven't even conceptualised, everybody loses. And that gets passed on to the client and partner whether you realise it or not.
The most successful stands at Tech Week aren't those with the flashiest tech or the smoothest talkers – they're the ones where introverted innovators and extroverted evangelists work in harmony and translate that to the benefit of their stakeholders and customers.
Manchester's Secret Weapon
What often strikes me, comparing London's tech scene to our Manchester digital community, is how our northern pragmatism actually gives us an edge. We're less precious about job titles and more focused on outcomes. I've seen CTOs who can work a room at Circle Club and account directors who understand API architecture.
This cross-pollination isn't accidental. It's what happens when you build a tech hub around collaboration rather than competition. But even in Manchester, we're not immune to the challenges.
The Real-World Struggles
Even our most collaborative tech businesses face these three critical pain points sometimes:
- The Translation Trap – Technical teams feel undervalued because their achievements aren't understood, while commercial teams feel unsupported because they can't articulate client needs in tech terms
The Trust Deficit – When departments don't understand each other's workflows, they find it hard to recognise different working styles and collaborate despite the differences
- The Opportunity Blindness – Siloed teams miss chances to upsell, innovate, or solve client problems because insights aren't shared across personality divides
The good news? These challenges are entirely solvable. As London Tech Week demonstrates, the future belongs to organisations that can harness both deep technical expertise and strong relationship skills. The magic happens when we stop seeing these as opposing forces and start treating them as complementary superpowers.
Manchester's digital sector is perfectly positioned to lead this integration. We've got the technical talent and the commercial creativity – and I can only imagine it continuing to advance rapidly. What a time to be alive!
Dr Elayne Doherty CEO and Founder of Pip English UK. To learn more join our next free event on 9 July: https://www.manchesterdigital.com/event/pip-english-uk/the-science-of-uk-business-influence
