In Davos this week, the Business Secretary Grant Shapps announced that the UK will launch a Scale-Up Summit “to bring together key frontier tech, development and finance figures who have accelerated tech businesses from start-ups to scale-ups.”

Shapps wants to hear from those in the UK and beyond – from California to Tallinn – who have achieved high growth, unicorn status and experienced multiple exits, to “build networks and share expertise.”

It’s still in the planning stages. We’ll be sharing our advice on how to make this successful, but I have some initial thoughts based on my experience of attending conferences (even though I tend to avoid them).

First, the agenda should be acutely focused on particular challenges and opportunities. For example, I hope his mention of Tallinn is a reference to Estonia’s impressive digital state. After all, it’s estimated that their reforms collectively save Estonian business owners around 12 million hours every year. What we need now isn’t a vague session about the benefits of such innovations, but a concrete blueprint of how we implement them. Many of these innovations were created and are being developed by Estonian entrepreneurs, who could simply be hired to do the same here. We shouldn’t be wasting lots of taxpayer money reinventing the wheel.

Second, each session needs to be attended by the relevant ministers across government departments and top-level civil servants. For example, if there’s a session on the space industry, it’s no good just having the business department and the UK Space Agency in attendance. Depending on the focus, the likes of the MoD, DCMS, Transport, DIT, Defra, Ofcom, and the Civil Aviation Authority may need to attend. Where there are sessions which involve civil servants from multiple departments, these same civil servants then need to share ideas and potential actions with each other.

Third, to get the best people from around the world it will need to be a hybrid event, but the networking component (for want of a better word) – whether online or in-person – is where a lot of the added value can be created. One technological innovation that makes conferences more useful is the ability to see profiles and request one-on-one meetings. Ministers, MPs and civil servants should be included in this.

Beyond Davos and conferences, it’s worth taking a step back to acknowledge the Business Secretary’s speech in the round. When I started The Entrepreneurs Network nearly a decade ago, the language of entrepreneurship was alien to politicians. The Coalition had launched the Startup Britain campaign a few years earlier, but their thinking didn’t scale beyond encouraging more small businesses.

That’s all changed, with MPs across all parties keener than ever to understand and talk about entrepreneurship. This is an opportunity and challenge to politicians to live up to their rhetoric.

I’m sure many of you have more experience of what makes for a successful summit. So why don’t you let me know and we’ll do our best to amplify your views.

Choice Questions
Our friends at Coadec have launched a survey for founders to share their views on the UK's immigration system. They want to know about any barriers you might have faced when hiring from abroad, and whether you find the UK’s immigration system easy to understand and navigate. There are just seven multiple-choice questions, so if this is a policy area where you want to see change, it’s worth spending a few minutes to respond.

Only a Number
Adviser to the network Jarmila Yu alerted me to a media opportunity that I think one of you will be able to help with. The BBC’s Felicity Hannah is making a documentary about very young entrepreneurs: “Would love to hear about children or very young people who have launched their own businesses (but, like, actually – not businesses that their parents really run).” You can get in touch with her via Twitter. Do share far and wide.