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Needed for growth in the UK: practical and cultural changes
Success depends on public-private partnership
AWS is investing in skills for the future
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Three key ingredients drive tech sector growth
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Sponsored by:
Darren Hardman, VP & General Manager, UK and Ireland, AWS Chris Philp MP, Minister for Tech and the Digital Economy, DCMS Priya Guha, Venture Partner, Merian Ventures Sue Daley, Director, Technology and Innovation, techUK
How is the UK Building a Dynamic and Thriving Tech Sector?
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“We have 52 company restaurants, making us the largest operator of the restaurant brand. So, we are right there next to the franchisee. We know exactly what it takes to run them and what it takes to build them and what the challenges are, be they labor or food or whatever.”
- Scott Deviney, CEO, Chicken Salad Chick
Continued growth in the UK’s tech sector requires ideas, people, and investment
Taken together, these three ingredients have already proven to foster enormous growth in the UK. Pushing further and faster will create that same growth in the future. Enacting UK government strategy published by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) requires coordination and cooperation with multiple other government departments. In the year ahead, the 50-page strategy will be converted into actions for DCMS and other departments to deliver.
“Let's be ambitious as a country. Be ambitious in your businesses. Don't be satisfied being simply moderately successful. Don't be satisfied being just a UK or just a European business. Have global ambitions. Aim to be impactful, aim to be global, aim to be big. The United Kingdom is a place you can do that. We've got the capital, we've got the talent, we're going to have even more. And we've got the ideas and the innovation.”
- Chris Philp MP, Minister for Tech and the Digital Economy, DCMS
Investment
People
Ideas
The tech sector in the UK has seen amazing growth in recent years. To ensure a continued growth trajectory, the greatest benefit will be derived from three key ingredients:
Chris Philp MP, Minister for Tech and the Digital Economy, DCMS
A pan-UK educational approach to building technical skills fuels advancement
The global economic system will soon be facing the challenges of an economic downturn. Over the next 6-12 months, the climate for raising capital will be extremely challenging. To mitigate the global economic downturn, there is a real opportunity in the UK to translate the top-class, world-level research from the country’s universities into commercial prospects to be scaled. The UK’s higher education system is one of the top in the world, but the opportunity for commercialization of the research coming from UK universities has yet to be realized.
Cultural changes. Create a culture that fosters and celebrates cooperation between education and industry. It is necessary to shift the cultural mindset in the greater UK to further encourage a globally ambitious business community.
Practical actions. Provide support for entrepreneurship at universities throughout the UK—not only at the top six institutions, but for every educational establishment—to have a system that supports technology transfer and spinning out of companies. In addition, build trade and digital relationships through agreements with other countries, to facilitate digital free trade and data transfer. This can make the UK a springboard for global expansion.
This can be accomplished in two main ways:
“I spent five years in Silicon Valley. We don't have the culture that you will see in a place like Stanford, where an academic can double-hat [work on the side] with a really exciting startup or a number of startups—and that's perfectly acceptable. We need to move to a place where it is absolutely normal for our best academics to also be CEOs and scaling amazing companies.”
- Priya Guha, Venture Partner, Merian Ventures
Priya Guha, Venture Partner, Merian Ventures
“It’s a fairly reasonable way to get new guests in your restaurant, partly because third-party delivery is bringing them there.”
Industry supports the government strategy through investment in skills and services
Support for the next wave of new businesses to grow and make an impact across the world
Direct investment into the UK
While it is important that the UK government is setting out a vision to support the tech sector, the success of the strategy is also dependent on contributions from industry in two key ways:
Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently announced that it expects to spend more than £1.8 billion in the next two years building and operating data centres in the UK in order to meet the growing needs of its customers and to help strengthen the UK’s digital infrastructure. This investment will further support a strong foundation for the UK digital economy through associated skills, training, and sustainable solutions. For organisations to scale and grow, they need access to the best technology, and the skills to execute their ideas. UK unicorns, and organisations of all sizes in all industries, are building on AWS because the cloud democratises access to technology that might once have been available only to enterprises. The buying power of a big enterprise is no longer necessary to experiment and bring ideas to life using technologies like AI and machine learning. The cloud also provides organisations the ability to go global and scale quickly and easily, helping UK businesses to make an impact worldwide.
“We ran some stats on this recently that said, if you took the cloud prevalence of companies in London—that's London companies using Cloud to build their businesses—and you dropped it into the Northeast of England, you drive £1.4 billion of productivity and wage increases. And that's just in a single region.”
- Darren Hardman, VP & General Manager, UK and Ireland, AWS
Darren Hardman, VP & General Manager, UK and Ireland, AWS
Cloud computing plays a critical productivity role in all UK businesses, but education and training is required to support the skills that entrepreneurs need to turn their ideas into action. To this end, to help level up the benefits of cloud, AWS has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to provide cloud computing skills training for 29 million people globally by 2025—for free. In doing so, they will reach people from all walks of life and all levels of technical knowledge, in more than 200 countries including the UK. According to research, 11.6 million people in the UK, or 35% of the workforce needs digital skills training over the next year alone, just to keep pace with technological advancements. To address this, and as a way of building an inclusive, diverse global pipeline of new cloud talent, AWS has created programmes such as AWS re/Start, which prepares learners from unemployed and underemployed populations who have little technology experience, for careers in the cloud – at no cost to the learner. It also connects learners with potential employers. Other AWS skills and training programmes include AWS Academy, which provides higher education institutions with free, ready to teach cloud computing curricula that prepares students to pursue industry-recognised AWS certifications and in-demand cloud jobs, and AWS Educate, which offers hundreds of hours of self-paced training and resources for new-to-cloud learners.
Through a range of offerings, AWS supports the UK's strategy for tech sector growth
AWS has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to provide cloud computing skills training for 29 million people globally by 2025—for free.
Speakers
Sue Daley
Director, Technology and Innovation, techUK
Sue leads techUK's Technology and Innovation work.This includes work programmes on cloud, data protection, data analytics, AI,
Priya Guha
Venture Partner, Merian Ventures
Priya is a Venture Partner at Merian Ventures, investing in women-led innovation, a Member of the Innovate UK Council and Adjunct Faculty
Oliver Kent-Braham
Co-founder & CEO, Marshmallow
Oliver Kent-Braham, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Marshmallow. During his time working with one of the major UK insurers, Oliver
Darren Hardman
VP & General Manager, UK and Ireland, AWS
(moderator)
Darren Hardman was appointed as the VP & General Manager of AWS UK and Ireland in April 2020. Since joining, Darren has bought his wealth of
Chris Philp MP
Minister for Tech and the Digital Economy, DCMS
Chris Philp was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on
business transformation and strategy experience, partnering with organisations of all sizes—from start-ups, through to the UK’s largest enterprises—to accelerate their customer-centric digital business transformation and help them realise new forms of customer value, leveraging AWS cloud. Prior to joining AWS, Darren enjoyed a 22-year spell at Accenture, including the joint venture "Avanade."
at the Ashridge Hult Business School. She was previously G M for RocketSpace , launching their UK operations. Priya used to be a career diplomat, most recently as British Consul General to San Francisco and previously in India and Spain. She is on the Digital Catapult and Althea Foundation Boards, the Tech London Advocates Advisory Board and London Tech Week Advisory Committee.
17 September 2021.He was previously Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Home Office and Ministry of Justice from 13 February 2020 to 16 September 2021. Before that, he was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice from 10 September 2019 to 18 December 2019 and Minister for London at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government from 18 December 2019 to 13 February 2020.
digital ethics, Digital Identity and Internet of Things as well as emerging and transformative technologies and innovation policy. She has been recognised as one of the most influential people in UK tech by Computer Weekly's UKtech50 Longlist and in 2021 was inducted into the Computer Weekly Most Influential Women in UK Tech Hall of Fame. A key influencer in driving forward the data agenda in the UK Sue is co-chair of the UK government's National Data Strategy Forum.
became aware of the inherent inefficiencies in traditional insurers and the lack of customer-centric options for UK consumers. Since it launched in 2018 Marshmallow has grown to have over 100,000 members and over 175 employees, and has recently been valued at over $1 billion making Oliver and his twin brother Alexander two of only a handful of entrepreneurs who have founded a unicorn before turning 30.
Webinar
With record levels of investment, the return of UK IPOs and an ever-increasing number of thriving start-ups, there is a real sense of energy and optimism in the UK tech sector. So, how will the sector continue to develop and thrive? How does the UK government strategy on innovation and skills support our scale-ups and entrepreneurs to achieve success?
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