A Modern Industrial Strategy

The Government has been taking submissions for their Industrial Strategy Green Paper, and last week we submitted a response. Read the full response here.

We believe that there is nothing modern about a strategy that simply places a sticking plaster on legacy industries, and looking ahead, technology should be the backbone of any modern industrial strategy for the UK. The Industrial Strategy will deal with a wide range of topics, but here are some that we chose to focus on:

Why not put technology at the core of the strategy? There is a world in which this modern industrial strategy, rather than being led by DBT (and HMT), was led by DSIT – as this is where future growth in the economy will come from.

We need to consider how traditional data sets reflect and understand the economic impact made by venture-backed technology companies.

We should not forget the “Invisible” Industrial Strategy – we’ve created a thriving early stage software ecosystem (e.g. through EIS, SEIS and share options) – the industrial strategy should cement our world-leading tax incentives and focus on supporting these businesses to grow into the billions with growth capital.

We do, however, need to pay particular attention to the challenges of deeptech. With other nations clearly focusing on how to develop deeptech national superstars, the UK needs to do the same.

UKRI is well-financed, but the funding is not being efficiently distributed. Many feel they are messed around by the system that tells startups to contort to fit it, rather than it reflecting their growth journey.

We would love to hear what you think about the details of our submission, what have we got right, where should we go further, and what have we missed.