How can Commonwealth businesses keep ahead and engaged in an era of rapid technological innovation?

I never thought a lot about the Commonwealth, except as a bit of a vestige of a bygone era. However through attending the Commonwealth Business Forum and the Digital Roundtable “How can Commonwealth business keep ahead and engaged in an era of rapid technological innovation” I was struck by the potential of the Commonwealth as a connected economic zone and innovation community. A third of the world’s population live in the Commonwealth and we have a shared history, however we think about it. Hats off to Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP, Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport who did a great job of setting the stage and was at the young end of the spectrum for the roundtable!

Here are my takeaways:

1.      We need to bridge the gap between the “establishment” and “young entrepreneurs”

CHOGM is a Heads of Government meeting, and the business forum connects business around the Commonwealth. So there was broad representation from around the world – Africa, Asia and Caribbean. I must note that the demographic was a bit skewed towards the more “senior” side and there were few young innovators present. I loved the analogy given by Sir Kenneth Olisa Lord Lieutenant of Greater London (cool title, whatever it means!). He talked about the cultural challenge of bringing together the “establishment” or as he suggested “Calm Aircraft Carrier Captains” with the “Mad fighter pilot entrepreneurs.”

2.      Government should be a Catalyst

Tech Nation, Malta and Invest Cyprus spoke about how Government can be a catalyst to drive innovation through:

·      Political leadership – setting policies to attract talent to each country; investors, academics and  developers

·      Ensuring access to talent. Creating visa policies and incentives to attract entrepreneurs – programmers – designers – engineers and UX designers. Enhancing curriculum in schools so that core digital skills are taught to all from a young age.

·      Attracting finance – such as government backed bonds  with matched funding and venture capital incentives to back tech companies

·      Infrastructure – including physical spaces, broadband, plus underpinning policies – data – trading arrangements – policies on data and making trading available.

3.      Enabling Business Environment

Government can set an enabling business environment for digital innovation. The Commonwealth Governments need to bridge the digital divide. The only way for developing countries to catch up is though digital initiatives. The Commonwealth can support developing countries through sharing knowledge, access to talent and talent development, investment in transformation of education. A welcome recommendation was put forward to develop a digital commonwealth initiative from all countries to share agenda and knowledge. But let’s not make this an “establishment” led program – let’s turn to the entrepreneurs, co-working spaces, incubators and accelerators and figure out how to connect them and enhance what they do – more “Mad Fighter Pilots” needed!

4.      Skills, Skills, Skills

There is a massive skills shortage for the digital future everywhere – transformational education innovation is critical.

5.      Data, Data, Data

It’s all about the data. Data was discussed at every turn from making anonymized data available for health research, to data portability, to paying people for access to their data, to data as part of digital infrastructure, data rules in a digital economy, data protection, and sophisticated rules about private data. Figuring out how data is used and protected is a central problem to be resolved.

Well worth the time – lively conversations – need to have a more a balanced demographic – so we actually learn from the innovators who are changing our world.