A tenner to start a business? Britain needs 'garage' culture

Britons can be great inventors, but they are not always as good entrepreneurs.

The UK has an engineering tradition that spans Brunel and Stephenson, Frank Whittle (inventor of the jet engine), Alan Turing (father of much of modern computing) and contemporary inventors such as James Dyson.

But look through the history of the UK's great inventors and inventions, and the impression is that they succeeded largely despite, rather than because, of the UK's economic system.

The present Government quite rightly wants to change that. The launch this week of the Start Up Britainprogramme is a step in the right direction.

But if the UK is to produce the type of business environment that entrepreneurs enjoy in the US or countries such as Israel, we need to do rather more.

The problem certainly will not be fixed by giving children 10 to start a business, although the idea makes for good headlines. Kids have a fairly well-honed understanding of the value of money mine seem to manage to trade Moshi Monster cards without Ministerial help. It is the lack of support when they venture out into the business world that sets them back.

Enterprise societies at university level could be a useful tool, as could the school-based Enterprise Champions. But the real issue goes deeper, and takes in not just funding and training, but the whole approach to enterprise.

In the US, access to financial backing for start ups appears much easier, even after the economic downturn. The "garage" mentality, of allowing anyone with an idea to start to make a business from it, has spawned world-class companies such as Apple and Hewlett Packard.

Ready access to angel investors and venture capital, and strong links between business and universities including around the transfer and exploitation of intellectual property also make the US, and California especially, an easier place for new ideas to grow.

In the UK, there are some grounds for hope. The area of research expertise around Cambridge, for example, and the Silicon Roundabout initiative in London are just two examples. The BBC's move to Salford should also boost innovation in the media in that part of the UK.

But as yet, we do not have anything on the size and scale of Silicon Valley and entrepreneurs continue to claim that neither the banks, nor the authorities, do much to boost the start up's cause.

Perhaps this latest Government initiative, though, will be the one that starts a real transformation and allows new businesses especially new technology businesses to grow and thrive.

It would be good to see the UK create the financial and cultural environment that our still world-class scientists and engineers deserve.

Stephen Pritchard is a contributing editor at IT PRO.

Comments? Questions? You can email him here