Despite the Government doling out £500m to fund the installation of new electric arc furnaces at Port Talbot, 3,000 job losses are expected at the Welsh steelworks. This follows news earlier in the week that the unemployment rate in the May-to-July period was up to 4.3% for the first time in nearly two years.
There may be trouble ahead. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown using OBR projections of public spending up to 2070, health, social care, and pensioner benefits are going to push public spending off the chart – look at the so-called ‘graph of doom’, if you dare – while we suffer the stagnating effects of an ageing population. Short of another Baby Boom (and a time machine as a lot of this is now inevitable) or mass immigration, there’s only one solution: increasing productivity.
“Enter stage right”: entrepreneurs and innovators.
This week ARIA has announced its Programme Directors, who are hoping to answer some mind-bending Ted Chiang-like questions, such as: Can we create edible vaccines made by plants? What if all diagnostic tests could be done directly in the GP office within the initial appointment? Can we develop the capability to control the weather and climate on a regional and global basis, to mitigate or obviate hurricanes, droughts, floods and heatwaves? How complex could a robot be and still biodegrade completely into non-toxic components?
The future is potentially incredible, but it will also be incredibly disruptive. And not just for people working in steelworks. Goldman Sachs predicts artificial intelligence could replace 46% of administrative positions, 44% of legal positions, and 37% of engineering jobs – and while new jobs will be created, this won’t be an easy task for governments to cope with (there aren’t that many pots of £500m to go round).
We know how to mitigate a lot of the headwinds (or know someone who does). Perhaps you do too. If so, our friends at TxP have a new £5000 blog prize, in partnership with Civic Future and New Statesman Spotlight for young(ish) people to share their ideas on how to bring about a golden age. Good luck! We’ll need it.
Disability & Entrepreneurship
Off the back of their excellent survey-led report, our friends at Small Business Britain are determined to take forward practical and policy support for founders with a disability. This may include policy work, mentoring, peer-to-peer support, access to experts, and much else besides. If you want to find out more, get in touch with them.
One question that I’m pondering is the role of technology – something I'm chatting to Martyn Sibley about. He is the co-founder and CEO of Purple Goat and “a regular guy who happens to have a disability called Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA).”
Jacques Carolan at ARIA will be looking at: “What new technologies would enable high-bandwidth brain-machine interfaces for speech or motor control, so people living with disabilities could use the devices in their own homes?” But it strikes me that there must be other great work being undertaken, with potentially huge spillovers, even beyond those with disabilities. Or if there isn’t, why not? Get in touch if this is your area of expertise. We are keen to learn more.
Be the Change
We’re busy writing our latest Female Founders Forum paper, which we run with Barclays. It’s our longest-running project and could easily be a think tank in its own right. If you’re a female founder who has an opinion on any of the following questions, please share your thoughts with the author.
Are there any obstacles you encountered at the beginning of your career as a founder which continue to present challenges, either for you or for other female founders you know?
The past few years have brought so much change – giving rise to new industries, shifting more work remotely, presenting new tools and technologies to change how we work. How have female entrepreneurs been impacted by and responded to these changes?
Where do you believe there is still great progress to be made? What would you hope to see change in the next five years?
Are there any issues not being talked about enough when it comes to discussing barriers to female entrepreneurship? What areas need more focus?
While I can’t guarantee they will all make it into the final report, they’ll definitely help inform our thinking and we’ll make sure you’re invited to the House of Lords launch
Mad Skills
Seema Malhotra MP has been handed the Shadow Skills brief. Seema is chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Entrepreneurship, which we are the Secretariat of. In his monthly newsletter, Eamonn Ives, our head of research, updated on some of our relevant research on this topic – both for Seema, as well as her counterpart across the aisle, the Rt Hon Robert Halfon MP.
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