TEN More Years

First off, on Wednesday we’ll celebrate our ten-year anniversary in style with an afternoon tea reception on the Terrace of the House of Lords, kindly supported by Octopus Group. If you’re a Patron, Adviser, Supporter (sign up here) or someone who has been closely involved in our work request a place here. It’s not just a party – we’ll be releasing a new report that sets out the fundamental building blocks that go into making sure the next ten years are the entrepreneurs’ decade.

That eye on the future is why – as reported in the Sunday Times (paywall) – we’ve launched the Private Business Commission to investigate why some companies appear to struggle to maximise their growth potential within the UK, and to advocate for policies to better ensure they are able to do so. The Commission is chaired by our Patron Steve Rigby, co-CEO of Rigby Group, one of Europe’s largest technology businesses and investors, and expert Commissioners from the worlds of business, finance, and politics. This includes Chris Hulatt, co-founder of Octopus Group, Irene Graham OBE, CEO and a board director of the ScaleUp Institute, and Janine Hirt, CEO of Innovate Finance.

The Commission will consider things like access to funding, tax incentives, capital markets, and employee incentives, but we will be led by the evidence that is submitted into the call for evidence (watch this space). The UK is home to just 4% of the world’s largest companies, a drop from 20% only two decades ago. With the rise of China and India some relative decline is to be expected, but some things are clearly not working properly.

Just today, the Evening Standard reported that money is flowing out of the London stock market at a record pace – faster than all but four European countries. We’ve been warning about this for longer than I care to remember. The best time to fix it was a decade or more ago – the next best time is now.

Neurodiverse Nuances
As you may have already seen, we put out a report with Barclays Eagle Labs on Neurodiverse Founders this week. It was based on an extensive survey and the results reveal a lot. Steph Bailey did a great job in Sifted of explaining the nuances, so did Robert Scammell for UKTN, and I had a go for Forbes. For the time poor, the report's author Eamonn Ives has a useful thread covering the main findings. 

On the negative side, only 4% of neurodiverse founders surveyed report never experiencing discrimination because of their neurodiversity, while 48% report ‘regularly’ or ‘always’ experiencing discrimination. No doubt as a result, 78% agree they have ‘hidden’ their neurodiversity in business situations, compared to just 7% who do not. 

On the ‘mixed bag’ side of the findings, 48% of neurodiverse founders surveyed believe there is an adequate level of understanding of neurodiversity in the business community, versus 35% who do not. While 42% think neurodiversity is accurately portrayed in the media, compared to 38% who do not. And 47% agree there are enough role models for neurodiverse people in business, versus 35% who do not.

On the positive side, 67% of neurodiverse founders surveyed say their neurodiversity makes them a better business person, compared to just 7% who think the opposite. And encouragingly, 61% believe that it has become easier for people with neurodiversity to succeed in business compared to when they first became a founder. Indeed, the likelihood that a respondent agrees it has become easier to succeed increases among entrepreneurs who launched their business further in the past. Nearly seven in ten founders of businesses started seven or more years ago agreed this to be the case.

However, it’s also clear from our survey that for many neurodiverse people entrepreneurship isn’t their first choice. We found that 66% agree that they struggled to find employment prior to setting up their own companies due to their neurodiversity, compared to 16% who do not. And as many as 64% agree that their neurodiversity meant that setting up a company of their own was the only way they could earn a living, compared to 17% who do not.

This reflects badly on conventional business practices. As much as we think entrepreneurship is great, we don’t think people should be forced into it. We’ll feed this research into the work of the Lilac Review.