Good news for UK tech companies, on the face of it. But what does it say about the efforts currently in place to do the things which the PM is looking at?
InnovateUK, which invests more than £560million a year into new technologies, and EPSRC, which allocated £900m to UK universities in 2015/16, would be more than happy to have their budgets increased. But what the UK appears to lack more than anything is the ability to take innovative start ups and grow them into companies of scale. In the relatively few cases when this has happened, they have been sold to foreign organisations. The same is true with breakthrough technology; the UK’s history is littered with examples of where other countries have profited from UK innovation.
Quite why this is the case has been debated for years – is it the fault of impatient investors or does the UK simply not produce managers with the skills necessary to move companies into global scale?
Debate will continue, but you have the feeling that, when it comes to building companies of scale, it’s a question of culture. And that won’t be solved by short term injections of cash.
