Gordon Brown wants Britain to invent, invest in and own the future (British households would be £5,000 richer if we were more innovative. Let’s unleash our talents, 9 October). But invent what, and for whom? His hunt for “lost Einsteins” rests on a narrow vision: a lone genius invents, commercialisation scales, the problem is solved.
That may suit a cancer drug, but not the wicked problems of our time – social care, education, climate – which demand not silver bullets but new technologies and practices for collaboration, distributed ownership and collective innovation.
The current struggle to retrofit governance, accountability and benefit on to AI exposes the fiction of genius-engineered “solutions”. Nor do trillion-dollar companies make every household £5,000 richer. They concentrate short-term gain in a narrow founder-investor class; the rest of us carry the work and cost of long-term cleanup.
It’s a vicious cycle: the government worries about big tech yet incentivises more of it, competing with Silicon Valley by doing the same – just not quite as well. My organisation is a community interest company with an asset lock, built for competitive innovation in the public interest.
Labour created this structure in 2005 to enable a new generation of public-good companies, but innovation policy has yet to back it. UK Research and Innovation is closed to us: we aren’t a research organisation. Innovate UK now deems our community interest company ineligible for a knowledge transfer partnership, despite previous success with the University of Edinburgh. The Advanced Research and Invention Agency backs lone inventors. The Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme and the Enterprise Investment Scheme reward only uncapped shareholder returns.
Much is made of Palantir and the NHS, yet current policy doesn’t let a competitive British alternative emerge: one that tackles systemic data problems while letting trusts and communities retain ownership and agency. With funding, that is five years away, not a fantasy. If the government wants innovation that tackles the hardest problems, benefits all citizens, and competes globally, it must look beyond the models it rewards today.
Kate Fleming
Director, IDEMS
Gordon Brown’s analysis of Britain’s innovation ecosystem is largely correct. We do have world-class universities, rigorous research and a track record of discovery, and he’s right to highlight the gap between these strengths and their commercial returns. It’s no doubt a defining challenge of our time.
But there’s one word conspicuously absent from his argument: creativity. In making the case for innovation, Brown has fallen for a common trap, defaulting to a vision of research and development (R&D) that begins and ends with Stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). This vision leaves no place for the creative advantage that in many cases makes true innovation possible.
The UK’s creative industries contribute £145bn to the economy annually, growing at four times the national rate. Research by the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre shows that nearly two-thirds of creative micro-firms have engaged in R&D in the past three years, outstripping every other industrial strategy priority sector. Brown might be surprised to learn that the UK university producing the most student startups is actually University of the Arts London (UAL).
UAL startups are using lateral thinking to develop biodegradable alternatives to plastic, building tools that decarbonise supply chains, pioneering food waste fermentation technology, and creating new materials from agricultural byproducts that could transform the construction industry.
They are engaging in real-world R&D to solve major global problems that transcend the creative sector, yet as creative businesses with arts graduates at the helm, they are consistently excluded from the narrative and the wider policy framing.
If we are serious about innovation driving good growth, we cannot afford a definition that excludes one of our most dynamic, inventive and internationally competitive sectors. Unlocking Britain’s full innovation potential means recognising that creativity and science are partners, not opposites.
Jenny Haigh
Head of policy for creative economy, University of the Arts London
