F or a country poised to grow faster than the rest of the Group of Seven industrialised nations, Britain retains a curious inferiority complex about its entrepreneurial culture. Politicians fret that the UK creates plenty of traders and property speculators but too few of the budding tycoons needed to keep us top of the league. The supposedly irrefutable proof is Britain’s failure to create a Facebook, Google or Amazon.
Within the coalition government, this failure has become a focal point for business policy – the UK equivalent of US President John Kennedy’s promise to land a man on the moon. David Cameron, the prime minister, cannot meet young entrepreneurs without urging them to remove this stain from the national record and create a world-bestriding tech behemoth. Behind the scenes, officials and advisers scurry about trying to remove all obstacles to start and build a company. The government issues thousands of start-up loans to young people. New venture capital tax breaks and easier routes to list a company have been created. The enterprise community has been blessed with the appointment of 12 MPs as “small business ambassadors”.
Fostering entrepreneurialism is a noble aspiration. But it is an error to make this about “creating our own Google”. Britain’s failure to do so says little about our ability to innovate and prosper.