Mobilise: Scaling British and allied innovation over the next ten years

Mobilise: Scaling British and allied innovation over the next ten years

This Ditchley conference aims to address the challenge of why the UK and Europe are doing well at incubating technology companies but not growing them to scale. The various factors have been well diagnosed, for example as reported in the House of Lords’ Science and Technology Committee November 2025 report Bleeding to Death: the science and technology growth emergency, but so far not successfully addressed. 

Rather than analysing the problem once again, our discussion will focus on why attempts to address it have failed in order to draw up a practical plan to address market access, talent bottlenecks, funding gaps and other factors that stand in our way. We need to develop strategies to take the UK (and Europe and other allied countries) from now good places to found innovative companies to a connected eco-system capable of growing them to scale at a transformational frequency. The plan will need to avoid over reliance on the collective solution of even harder challenges such as European capital markets union or European defence production coordination. We must find incremental gains that will build confidence, whilst keeping us moving in the right strategic direction.