Running Down the Wrong Road
Why Europe doesn’t produce innovative new companies
Back in 1991, while I was still halfway through my MBA course, I left the U.K. and headed to California. As a very atypical U.K. passport-holder, I knew I wanted more from my life than merely to be one more cubicle slave among millions. And I knew, from the few years I’d spent in the U.K., that if I remained on the gloomy little island it would be impossible for me to create any commercial enterprise that could potentially grow to employ thousands of well-paid people.
I’m briefly back in the U.K. 30 years later and nothing at all has changed except post-Brexit Britain is going backward rather than merely stumbling along. Far worse is the fact that countries in the European Union have likewise learned nothing over the last 30 years. For all the hype about London and Berlin being hubs in which innovative technology companies are thriving, the hard truth is that Europe has created no equivalents to the hundreds of so-called “unicorns” churned out by Silicon Valley. Indeed, the height of aspiration for Europe’s tech founders is that their company should be acquired by one of the U.S. giants. No one dreams of building the next Apple or Amazon or Facebook in Europe.
The picture is the same wherever in Europe we look. There are no innovative companies being created…
