This week’s Economist is focused on ‘adventure capitalism’ and why start-up finance is going global.
In their leader column, they talk about the biggest prize being more innovation, but no amount of cash can create raw brilliance. And whilst governments (and the UK government is doing a good job here) can fund some of the more basic scientific breakthroughs, the global supply of entrepreneurs is hardly fixed and plenty of ideas remain shamefully underexploited.
This is the case in the UK and particularly within the creative industries, which investors have traditionally been wary of. But the barriers to creating new businesses are falling thanks to cheap cloud computing and remote working.
At the British Design Fund we are inundated with great ideas landing on our doorstep – testament to the fact that lockdown has not stifled creativity. On the contrary, we believe that it has allowed hundreds of new ideas to be born and the ambition to create new businesses has never been higher.
In particular, one of the biggest trends we are seeing amongst the ideas we evaluate, is a growth in purpose-driven products and services.
UK entrepreneurs are realising that there is no need for more and more of the same. Instead they are looking to make a difference to the way we live our lives – and there’s money to be made with that philosophy.
So, in our view, 2022 is going to see an unprecedented wave of enterprise in the UK, which is why we will be using the experience and learnings we’ve gained over the last four years, to build on the power and uniqueness of the creative and design industries in the UK.
Join us in helping to realise as many of these opportunities as we can.
