This week we launched Operation Innovation. The essay collection’s subtitle tells you what it’s all about (and what we’re all about): “How to Make Society Richer, Healthier and Happier.”

As we write in our opening, each essay addresses a key way in which the UK can improve its growth prospects, and all of them focus on how to do this by supporting and harnessing innovation. Some discuss the barriers that prevent people from innovating in the UK, looking at housing, transport, and childcare costs, as well as immigration and taxation policy. Others examine the way we support and fund science and innovation, how we regulate emerging markets, how we build a culture that supports innovators, and how we integrate the things they develop into both private and public services. A few essays deep-dive into specific sectors, such as artificial intelligence, food production, and energy systems. But in all cases we asked authors to push the envelope and point readers towards important ideas that have been overlooked.

This isn’t an impenetrable tome. Each essay is the length of a comment article, which is why others are republishing them, including our opening essay, Tom Westgarth’s essay on why we need to make AI a higher political priority, Dr Lawrence Newport’s essay on how to inspire a culture of innovation, Bella Rhodes’s essay on reforming the visa system, and Matt Clancy’s essay on how to think about science funding. Keep your eyes peeled for more in the coming days.

Taken together, the collection adds up to a serious agenda for innovation, but I’ll restrict myself to two recommendations for today.

First, Meri Beckwith, the founder of Lindus Health, which is an innovator in clinical trials, shares his company’s Kafkaesque experiences dealing with ethics committees, suggesting some changes to make the UK the best place in the world to run clinical research.

Second, check out Harry Rushworth’s essay on how transport networks can support entrepreneurship through greater agglomeration. It’s one of a number of topics I expect we’ll delve into in more detail in a fuller paper – not least because it’s one of the more concrete ways to realise the ephemeral (in both meanings of the word) goal of levelling up the country.

You can read all the essays on our website here; read, reply, like and retweet our Twitter thread here; read, like and share my LinkedIn post here (also, feel free to connect with me); forward this email onto anyone who you think might be interested in the topic; and become a Supporter or Adviser – if you’re not so already – so we can continue to produce more unsponsored reports like this one.

Real Talk
The big news in business this week was undoubtedly the CMA’s decision to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision. Like most people, whenever a story of this nature drops I turn to Ben Thompson’s Stratechery to see what he thinks. It’s not great: “Microsoft is going to appeal this decision; if they fail, and pull out of console gaming entirely, the CMA will have … ensured Sony is dominant in consoles for a very long time to come.” Check out his article from last year on the history of consoles if you really want to understand why a lot of industry experts think this is a bad decision.

While the Government and regulators should be brave enough to stand up to big tech companies, it just as obviously matters if the regulators are making mistakes and if Microsoft and Activision are vehemently talking down the UK as a result. And as Ryan Bourne warns in The Times, with the creation of the Digital Markets Unit we can expect greater interventions. It goes without saying that competent competition regulators should protect consumers – but, as we have argued previously, overreach will be costly for both them and startups.

This is part of a bigger picture of decline though. In recent weeks I’ve had a table full of high-growth founders tell me that they’re planning to move their business abroad and heard anecdotes of the UK’s economic growth prospects being the butt of the jokes at international conferences. This was understandable after Brexit – in the same way that the US suffered reduced standing in the world following the election of Trump – but the US is having the last laugh with the gulf between our countries wealth per capita huge and widening. Eir Nolsøe points out in The Telegraph that back in 2008 forecasters were (reasonably) predicting the UK’s GDP per head would surpass that of the US. Jeremy Driver tells it straight: “The typical British family is now £6,800 worse off than a German family, £13,500 worse off than an American family, and, if we continue our current trajectory, is set to be poorer than a Polish family by the early 2030s.”

I don’t want to get accused of talking Britain down. We shouldn’t mock the ‘Unicorn Kingdom’ campaign as it is celebrating our genuinely incredible tech companies. This isn’t the 1960s and 70s, we aren’t the “sick man of Europe.” Just use Startup Genome’s great new tool for comparing startup ecosystems across the world for proof that we have incredible potential in our nation. It’s just there’s a great deal of ruin too. Too much.