Anne Sheehan, Enterprise Director, Vodafone UK
The UK is full of vibrant and diverse businesses. In the West Midlands, digital and creative businesses are quickly establishing themselves in locations like Innovation Birmingham Campus and the Custard Factory, In Yorkshire, Leeds has digital businesses specialising in areas like app development, video gaming and e-commerce now supporting over 23,000 jobs, producing £688 million of digital gross value added.
There is a huge opportunity for cities across the country to drive commercial and economic growth in the future by realising the UK’s digital potential.
One challenge that cities face is the movement of talent. As it stands, within six months of graduating, over 100,000 people leave the regions they studied in to start work – with the South East, the East Midlands, and Yorkshire and Humber seeing the largest numbers go (Higher Education Statistics Agency, 2016).
So how can we create the right environment to ensure we have the very best talent in our businesses? Our recent report, ‘Brain Gain: How to attract, retain and reconnect digital talent’ looks into exactly this, setting out what metro mayors and local governments can do to help build our tech workforce of the future.
Here are three key focus areas:
1. Build better digital infrastructure
For the UK to be a digital leader, upgrading its digital infrastructure is essential. Whether it’s using Internet of Things (IoT) technology to track local deliveries or harnessing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve customer services, connectivity sits at the heart of current and future technologies. Our country’s digital infrastructure will be fundamental in enabling the transformation of businesses and organisations.
In this context, delivering a strategy for full-fibre and 5G is critical. This should include using local government assets to create fibre ‘metro rings’ from which fibre can be taken to homes and premises, and expanding local 5G test beds.
Vodafone expects to invest £2 billion in the next few years on innovative technology and services, including a best-in-class fixed, mobile and converged network that will support developments in artificial intelligence, 5G and full fibre broadband, to name a few.
These changes will lay the foundations for further business innovation – whether creating new business models, selling services across new markets, or inspiring the development of entirely new products and services.
2. Harness the power of data
Data is the fuel that will the country’s best businesses will fire on. It’s vital that organisations – public and private – get better at both collecting and analysing it in a responsible way.
In order to encourage this, local policymakers can introduce a series of competitions to encourage innovation around the use of data. The way that Transport for London (TfL) allows app developers to use its data is a great example of this – just look at the success of apps like Citymapper in helping people get around the capital. In fact, Deloitte found the release of open data by TfL is generating annual economic benefits and savings of up to £130m a year, through saved time for passengers, commercial opportunities for developers and more.
There is also considerable value in using data to understand better the digital talent in different areas – informing programmes that can spot key trends and identify best practice.
3. Developing and retaining digital talent
To attract, retain and connect digital talent, businesses should work to make their town or city as attractive for digital entrepreneurs as possible. This means encouraging digital entrepreneurs to stay in their local areas, supporting companies as they scale up, and helping those taking a career break to return to the market.
There are multiple ways that these goals can be achieved. Local authorities can for example, look at unused or underused public sector buildings to help uncover potential low-cost office spaces for start-ups (with the latest digital infrastructure).
Regional networks or ‘councils’ can be set up to provide shared knowledge and understanding of new technologies. These can become critical in helping businesses to adopt new digital tools – making IoT and AI far more accessible, for example.
A platform for growth
The UK is ideally placed to be a world leading tech and digital centre. If any region is to play a leading role in this, it must unleash the digital potential of its people and organisations. Doing so will create more productive and prosperous places where people to want to live and work.