Three Big Ideas #52
An ode to optimism, the anti-monopoly machine, and creating a corridor of power
Welcome to our fortnightly 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
In a recent blog post, the ever-reliable Hannah Ritchie makes an interesting observation — that many of us are “individually optimistic, but collectively pessimistic.” She draws on a range of data that show how wide gulfs can exist between how people perceive how they themselves are doing versus how they think life is going for their fellow compatriots.
While reading, it occurred to me that a similar divergence has repeatedly shown up in our own surveys of founders. Last time out, fully 59% told us they were optimistic about the year ahead for their own business, even though just 8% thought the same about the economy as a whole. I wouldn’t dare criticise our esteemed respondents, but with the best will in the world, I can’t help but think there will have been some wishful thinking behind those results.
Then I thought to myself, “so what?” Suppose the 84% of founders who are pessimistic about the next 12 months for Britain’s economy are right. Would we be better off if they perfectly mirrored that sentiment about their own businesses? I hardly think so. If you’re one of the brave individuals who has taken the risk to start a company and do something different, it helps to be positive — even if that also means being a little Pollyannaish.
This isn’t an ode to blissful ignorance and unwarranted bullishness. Successful entrepreneurs are those who know when to stick as well as twist. But there’s an ocean of difference between realism and fatalism. As Ritchie concludes:
“If we think that nothing can be done to improve things, we’re unlikely to try. This is one reason why I try to emphasise that there are things that each of us can do to make the world a better place. We don’t have to just sit on our hands. Without a sense of agency, we can become cynical and fatalistic that anything can change.”
🌱 Philip Salter, Founder
In December, a paper titled AI as “Co-founder”: GenAI for Entrepreneurship was released that deserved far more attention outside academia. It provides rare, large-scale evidence that generative AI is already reshaping entrepreneurship in ways that cut against many popular assumptions about AI and market power.
The authors exploit the sudden release of ChatGPT as a global shock, comparing firm creation before and after its launch across neighbouring locations within the same city in China that differed in pre-existing AI-specific human capital. They identify a large, causal increase in small-firm entry — amounting to roughly 400,000 additional firms over two years, or around 6% of all new firms created nationally in the post-ChatGPT period — driven by reduced experience, financing and managerial constraints.
This result was not a given. Many have predicted that AI would reinforce concentration, entrenching large incumbents and reducing competition. Instead, the evidence points in the opposite direction: AI appears to act as a pro-competitive technology, compressing the minimum viable scale of entry and allowing individuals and small teams to replicate capabilities that previously required significant capital and labour.
This brings to mind the predictions of James Wise, Partner at Balderton Capital and Chair of the government’s Sovereign AI Unit, in his book Start-Up Century. Wise argues that the 20th-century model of working for a single large firm for most of one’s career is breaking down. Just as automation once shifted workers from farms to factories, AI and digital tools are now automating layers of corporate middle management and administrative work, pushing more people toward independent and entrepreneurial paths.
While this shift raises real challenges for individuals and policymakers alike, it also creates an opportunity for more people to exercise agency, pursue their own interests and build livelihoods through entrepreneurship.
🏘️ James Howat, Chief Economist, Labour Together
The 100-mile corridor between Oxford and Cambridge is one of the most exciting stretches of land on the planet. It serves as a crucible for British innovation and prosperity, yet even here the usual horsemen of stagnation hold us back: local politics, planning regulations, and financing (or lack thereof).
A new report authored by Labour Together and the Centre for British Progress details how we could rid ourselves of this unholy trinity and triple the GDP of the ‘Ox-Cam Corridor’. We call our plan Project Hawking.
Project Hawking would create a single development corporation — Hawking DevCo — and grant it supreme planning authority within the Ox-Cam Corridor. This would allow it to overrule any decision by local authorities within its boundaries that it believes undermines its mission, enabling it to deliver new infrastructure at pace.
It should also be afforded powerful land value capture tools — such as levying taxes on undeveloped land or congestion charges — which we believe could make the entire project self-funding. By buying land cheaply and granting planning permission and selling it for 100x multiples, Hawking DevCo would become a low-risk money-printing machine.
Government after government has promised to turn the Ox-Cam Corridor into a British Silicon Valley. Yet none have matched their ambitious rhetoric with workable plans. Ministers should give their backing to Project Hawking, and allow this small corner of England to pay massive dividends for the entire United Kingdom.