Let’s remind ourselves what we mean by ‘disruptor’. A truly disruptive business revolutionises its marketplace by delivering radical improvements in choice, price and accessibility. A disruptor may be a boffin or a bold lateral thinker: Henry Ford did not invent the motorcar any more than Airbnb invented the ‘homestay’, but both created systems that made the product cheaper and more available than ever before — and both count as great disruptors.
But these days ‘disruptor’ status is claimed by all manner of ventures. So in choosing our shortlist for the Award sponsored by Julius Baer, we had to sort the original from the derivative and distinguish those that are already delighting customers from those that are still testing concepts. Overall, however, we’ve been hugely impressed — and the entries tell us much about the UK’s distinctive strengths in innovation.
It came as no shock that their distribution was weighted towards London, simply because that’s where the UK’s biggest clusters of start-ups and capital happen to be. Likewise, it would be condescending to express surprise that so many entries also came from further north and from Scotland and Northern Ireland. A northerner myself, I’m well aware of the innovative power in hubs such as the Centre for Life, Newcastle’s biotech ‘science village’. Or Catalyst Inc, Northern Ireland’s ‘next generation science park’. Or the National Graphene Institute in Manchester, where scientists are developing uses of graphene — the world’s strongest and thinnest material — in everything from energy storage to sports footwear.
So I was expecting great ideas from all corners of the UK. More intriguing was to see which sectors were most strongly represented. Are we still a nation of shopkeepers — and these days, baristas — or are we rocket scientists at heart? Encouragingly, the first would-be entrant I spoke to heads a real-life rocket venture, Reaction Engines — but we agreed their technology was too early-stage for this year’s Awards.
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