Three Big Ideas #20
Costs of chaos, awakening the senses, and unbundling universities
Welcome to our weekly Three Big Ideas roundup, in which we serve up a curated selection of ideas (and our takes on them) in entrepreneurship, innovation, science and technology, handpicked by the team.
⁉️ Eamonn Ives, Research Director
Sometimes governments make decisions that actively impede the private sector – be it hiking corporate taxes or cutting off immigration pathways for skilled migrants. Quite rightly, these are usually met with criticism from businesses and trade groups alike.
But sometimes governments make decisions that should make life outright easier for the private sector, but which nevertheless draw ire from chief executives. Think here of the decision to push back the date for phasing-out the sale of new petrol vehicles, or when rules to regulate supermarket store layouts to discourage unhealthy eating were watered down. There’s nothing to stop any company who wishes to abide by the previously stated policies doing so voluntarily, yet it’s not unheard of for them to come out swinging when government changes tack.
Of course, one obvious explanation for why businesses complain is because they’re rent seeking. This theory states that incumbents actively embrace regulations if they believe it will be relatively harder for smaller competitors to comply with them – thereby allowing said incumbents to entrench their position in the market. I believe this happens more often than we’d like to admit, and as such I’ve always been rather sceptical when bosses insist on the need for ‘business certainty’.
With that being said, a recent post entitled ‘Chaos kills coordination’ by Brian Albrect got me thinking. In it, he cites compelling evidence that an increase in policy uncertainty noticeably hampers investment, production and employment. It isn’t hard to see why – particularly for risky businesses with long time horizons, if you can’t be sure what the world will look like five or ten years hence, you’d be forgiven for not taking the bet that things might pay off. In isolated cases, that’s a pity; but when it happens over and over, we all lose out considerably.
With these tensions in mind, how should governments approach regulating the business landscape? I think Brian hits the nail on the head when he writes:
“The goal isn’t to prevent all change, but to ensure changes follow predictable processes that maintain coherent and knowable rules, rather than creating arbitrary chaos. [...] Economic prosperity doesn’t require perfect policies, but it does require stable ones. A predictable, rule-based framework is what allows businesses to invest, workers to plan, and markets to function. Without it, we get paralysis, waste, and stagnation.”
📡 Anastasia Bektimirova, Head of Science and Technology
Every scientific instrument ever built, from a simple thermometer to the most sophisticated quantum sensor, expands the ways of understanding and collecting data about the world. Now, imagine an AI system that could simultaneously process data from all of these instruments or sensors, each measuring different aspects of reality. This is what Nicklas Lundblad, DeepMind’s Senior Director of Policy and Strategic Advisor, explores in his latest blog.
Nicklas writes:
“Imagine a military AI system that seamlessly integrates satellite imagery, signals intelligence, social media data, atmospheric conditions, electromagnetic signatures, seismic activity, and thousands of other data streams. This “hyper-sensorium” would enable the system to detect subtle patterns and correlations across immense and varied data spaces, revealing insights into troop movements, economic activities, and environmental changes that remain invisible to traditional, human-limited analysis. This unprecedented capability establishes a significant strategic asymmetry. Nations or organizations capable of building and controlling these advanced sensor networks would obtain a fundamentally different, deeper understanding of reality compared to those that rely solely on conventional sensors.”
With enough foresight, winners in this new frontier will gain economic and geopolitical advantages, while losers will fall behind. “Sensory competition,” as Nicklas writes, could mean new arms races, where success depends on who can best sense, understand, and respond to global developments.
It’s therefore reassuring to see that ARIA is ahead of the curve on this. The projects funded through its Scoping Our Planet opportunity space focus on innovative approaches to monitoring our planet. Each of them demonstrates just how granular data could get if the measurement tools allow. For example, one project will develop portable sensors that can fingerprint methane emissions in real-world conditions rather than just laboratories, while another one will use light from natural and artificial sources to create dense networks of sensors for monitoring cloud formation. Each new sensor type, every improvement in sensitivity or coverage, and their integration with conventional data sources, will unlock insights that were previously impossible.
🎓 Philip Salter, Founder
Unbundling is a familiar concept in technology, where Google Docs, Slack, Notion, Zoom and Dropbox have replaced Microsoft Office. But it’s not just tech where you can find it. Seemingly impenetrable institutions are being dismantled and reimagined in everything from banking, communications, defence, healthcare or transportation. Even religion has seen worship, education, community support and moral guidance split from established institutions.
In 'Unbundling the University’, Ben Reinhardt of Speculative Technologies thinks higher education should be next. He observes how universities have steadily accumulated a disparate number of roles – from moral instruction for young people to becoming a real-world dating site (and everything in between). For Reinhardt, the university bundle is like expecting every coffee shop to also include a “laundromat, a bookstore, and a karaoke bar.”
Reinhardt’s main area of interest lies in pre-commmercial technological research. He makes the case that breakthroughs here can happen much more effectively in a new institution: “Academia’s core structures and incentives revolve around education and scientific inquiry, not building useful technologies.”
He doesn’t pull any punches, describing universities as the most bureaucratic institutions in the world. He notes that tech transfer offices can drag out negotiations over draconian licensing terms for months or years: “These are not serious people.”
Reinhardt’s solution?
“A place for people with brilliant ideas to build atom-based technologies that won’t necessarily work as high-margin startups; to start projects that don’t necessarily fit into a specific bucket. These projects could evolve smoothly into bigger programs, baby Focused Research Organisations, or nascent companies; all united by a common mission to unlock the future.”
Find out more about Focused Research Organisations (FROs) in A New Model for Science, which we published alongside Convergent Research and the Tony Blair Institute.