Alan Turing Lecture - Braemar Summit

Dr Mike Lynch delivered the Alan Turing Lecture at the Braemar Summit in Scotland last week, providing insights into the changing technological landscape of Britain, the country’s place in the world, and what needs to be done to ensure that top tech businesses don’t move abroad.

Here are some key excerpts.

On Britain’s role in an increasingly technological world

“It is undeniable that technology is playing an increasing part in all aspects of our lives, both from an individual point of view, and as a nation, and that covers all the usual areas economically, but also areas such as our [Britain’s] strategic and role in the world.”

“When we think about it economically, especially when we’ve just been through lockdown and we see how we interact with technology, you can see that it is fundamental now to every part of commercial activity. The leading five technology companies on the American stock exchange, now their market cap dwarfs the rest of the market. So you’ve got this incredible concentration of economic might.”

“So technology now is not just about ego or economy, but it’s also about security, and perhaps an area which we haven’t really understood – it’s about sovereignty. All countries’ global independence and influence is now underpinned by the technology assets that they can bring to any discussion, that they can leverage in order to take their place in the world.”

“So, where is the UK in all of this? Well, the interesting aspect is that we have an absolutely incredible science base, it’s right up there at the top – we can go back through our historical achievements, but they’re still coming today, we’ve seen that, for example, in the vaccine race that we’ve just been through.”

“So the big question is really, if we have this amazing asset, and remember in this debate that’s like being a country that has vast reserves of oil under the ground, how do we actually make sure we’re turning that thing? - which is a difficult thing, you know, if you don’t have the oil in the first place, it’s very hard to have its impact. How do we actually turn that into the influence and impact that we want for our economy, or our public services, or our place in the world?”

On getting businesses to list in Britain

“Originally I was an academic scientist at Cambridge, and I did something that was very unheard of back then, which started a technology business. And so, that’s a journey where I’ve seen us go from a situation where the idea of setting up a business, being an entrepreneur, was unheard of, it wasn’t the thing that you did – in fact, it was slightly suspect at the time. And then, there was no venture capital industry, you couldn’t give your staff options, and the idea of listing that kind of business was something that you would expect to take decades.”

“Well that’s all changed. The wonderful thing is that through a series of government interventions over the years, problems around options were fixed, the taxation scheme was made more reasonable, the listing rules were changed, and it is a great success story. We have a very vibrant startup community, we have a great number of scale-up business – it is night and day different to back then.”

On what needs to be done

“[But] we haven’t quite finished the last part of the road that gets us these incredibly important, influential, valuable businesses out of the UK. Most of the road is fixed, but the very last mile, we’re just working on.”

“So what’s the problem here? The problem is, we get these amazing businesses, and I must stress they are second to none, their technology is incredible coming out of the UK…and then they get to a certain size, typically at the point where the technology is just about to really have impact…and they’re snapped up by overseas acquirers, often from the US.”

“What we need to do is make sure that getting that last bit done means that those businesses don’t get sold for 400 million, they get listed onto the London market and become multi-billion-dollar businesses.”

“We can tell the world – this is where you come to do your technology, this is where the brightest should come, this is where we have the modern regulatory framework.”

“We do make blockbusters, and we make enough of them, what we need to do is realise how important they are.”

“Strategic importance, sovereignty, security – we need to realise that technology is about Britain’s place in the world. We want to be listened to by our allies and respected by our enemies, and this is the currency of making that happen.”

“We have an absolutely exceptional science base in the UK, what we now need is an absolutely exceptional ambition to go with it.”

You can hear the whole speech here.