at the opening of the Royal College of Art (RCA) Dyson Building on Monday, which houses 40 business incubators for designers and engineers to foster British invention, Dyson said that the UK shouldn't be placing all its bets on London's start-up scene.

The government has made a string of announcements around nurturing the flourishing technology start-up scene in Shoreditch, later dubbed Tech City, which has led to the likes of Amazon and Google investing in the area.

"Government money is going into Silicon Roundabout [Tech City] and other areas, but not into the production of hardware, which is what this [RCA] is about. The hardware trade is growing at a much faster rate around the world than social media or any of the sorts of things at Silicon Roundabout," said Dyson.

"Apple's success is not based on software at all, it's based on hardware. All the other top twenty hardware companies are growing at a much faster rate than the Googles and Microsofts of this world, so much so that they are getting into hardware."

He added: "[The government] shouldn't forget the production of hardware, the manufacturing jobs it creates, the exports it creates and that is growing at a much faster rate than social media or software."