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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, attaining 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 schools 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 flip the UK right into a ‘unicorn breeding floor’.
Nonetheless, a robust and vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem is determined by range. From ‘Zebra’ companies (these which are each worthwhile and intention to enhance society) to ‘Gazelles’ (younger, fast-growing firms that convey sustained development and employment alternatives) and even ‘Mice’ (smaller corporations), a complete vary of enterprise fauna co-exists throughout the UK’s financial system and should be supported pretty if we’re to create a world-leading enterprise surroundings.
Silicon Valley 2.0 or a brand new mannequin for innovation?
Unicorn firms are sometimes perceived as an integral a part of creating the subsequent ‘Silicon Valley’, as Chancellor Jeremy Hunt recognized earlier this 12 months. 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 Economic 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 might 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 among 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 may improve native and nationwide prosperity, construct a extra inclusive financial system, and kick-start its personal, new type of international entrepreneurial hub.
The entire ecosystem of companies
Along with tapping into the present 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 development”, 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 convey wider societal advantages. Supporting a various ecosystem helps to spice up the UK’s attraction as an funding vacation spot and conducive surroundings for enterprise development and fosters a broader vary of improvements that may transition from the laboratory to the market extra shortly.
Right this moment’s challenges want extra innovators
It’s additionally necessary to keep in mind that the improvements that may remedy among the most urgent and sophisticated environmental, financial and societal issues of our time gained’t simply come from Unicorn firms. The UK’s broader engineering and deep tech ecosystem continues to display an inherent ability for creating 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 various biodegradable resolution to plastic constructed from seaweed and crops. Focusing solely on unicorns dangers encouraging funding away from such companies, which have a significant half to play each within the entrepreneurial ecosystem, and wider sustainability targets.
Our ecosystem wants range to thrive
Admittedly, Unicorns shimmer with the promise of financial achieve and dazzle with their mythological attraction; but, by focusing solely on rising these firms, we miss the larger image and a possibility to understand many societal advantages that different start-ups and SMEs can convey. The entire ecosystem, comprised of many extra ‘humble’ animals, should be nurtured to attain a various and wholesome entrepreneurial ecosystem wherein new species can evolve. It’s to this, that we should flip our consideration.
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