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By Dr John Lazar CBE FREng, beneath, Chair of the Enterprise Committee on the Royal Academy of Engineering
Over the previous decade, roughly 1,400 start-ups have joined the elusive “Unicorn” membership, reaching a valuation of over $1 billion as a personal firm. The relative exclusivity of the membership displays powerfully not simply on their founders themselves, but additionally on the colleges and governments of their nation of origin.
It’s unsurprising, subsequently, that establishments and sovereignties alike are determined to breed extra of the species: lately, Cambridge College introduced its intention to double its variety of unicorns by 2025, and on the UK’s AI Security Summit in November, Elon Musk mentioned how one can flip the UK right into a ‘unicorn breeding floor’.
Nevertheless, a robust and vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem depends upon variety. From ‘Zebra’ companies (these which might be each worthwhile and intention to enhance society) to ‘Gazelles’ (younger, fast-growing corporations that deliver sustained progress and employment alternatives) and even ‘Mice’ (smaller companies), an entire vary of enterprise fauna co-exists throughout the UK’s economic system and should be supported pretty if we’re to create a world-leading enterprise atmosphere.
Silicon Valley 2.0 or a brand new mannequin for innovation?
Unicorn corporations are sometimes perceived as an integral a part of creating the following ‘Silicon Valley’, as Chancellor Jeremy Hunt recognized earlier this yr. However we shouldn’t neglect that the UK tech ecosystem additionally has its personal distinctive strengths that should be nurtured and scaled in their very own proper, past merely replicating fashions from abroad. The lately launched Engineering Financial system and Place report from the Royal Academy of Engineering exhibits that past London, the South East and the Oxford-Cambridge arc, excessive concentrations of R&D exercise will be present in cities from Edinburgh, Belfast, Manchester and Brighton with different hidden engineering gems positioned proper throughout the UK, in locations like South Derbyshire, North Warwickshire and Ribble Valley. Engineering hotspots like West Lothian, Aberdeen, and Flintshire and Wrexham present a number of the nation’s largest engineering epicentres, with excessive proportions of native employment in engineering and know-how. By understanding, fostering and mixing these distinctive strengths in engineering throughout the nation, the UK might improve native and nationwide prosperity, construct a extra inclusive economic system, and kick-start its personal, new type of international entrepreneurial hub.
The entire ecosystem of companies
Along with tapping into the prevailing hotbed of engineering innovation unfold throughout the UK, a broader vary of enterprise fashions additionally must be supported.
As a “long-term plan for innovation-led progress”, the Division of Science, Innovation and Expertise’s UK Innovation Technique highlights the significance of “the entire ecosystem of companies”. It’s important that the federal government follows this ethos and recognises the danger of overlooking the wants of different fast-growing companies, or enterprise fashions that serve all communities and produce wider societal advantages. Supporting a various ecosystem helps to spice up the UK’s enchantment as an funding vacation spot and conducive atmosphere for enterprise progress and fosters a broader vary of improvements that may transition from the laboratory to the market extra rapidly.
Right now’s challenges want extra innovators
It’s additionally necessary to keep in mind that the improvements that may remedy a number of the most urgent and sophisticated environmental, financial and societal issues of our time gained’t simply come from Unicorn corporations. The UK’s broader engineering and deep tech ecosystem continues to reveal an inherent ability for growing options to construct a extra sustainable society. One instance of such a enterprise is Notpla, a Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Hub Member that gained The Earthshot Prize in 2022 for its different biodegradable answer to plastic created from seaweed and crops. Focusing solely on unicorns dangers encouraging funding away from such companies, which have an important half to play each within the entrepreneurial ecosystem, and wider sustainability objectives.
Our ecosystem wants variety to thrive
Admittedly, Unicorns shimmer with the promise of financial acquire and dazzle with their mythological appeal; but, by focusing solely on rising these corporations, we miss the larger image and a chance to grasp many societal advantages that different start-ups and SMEs can deliver. The entire ecosystem, comprised of many extra ‘humble’ animals, should be nurtured to attain a various and wholesome entrepreneurial ecosystem through which new species can evolve. It’s to this, that we should flip our consideration.
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