As London confronts a post-Brexit future in an age of changing work patterns and shifting global alliances, the connections between government support, entrepreneurism and technological capacity are at the heart of the debate of how cities will compete for jobs, talent and investment. Is the government doing enough to attract, stimulate and retain the next generation of individuals and companies that will keep the capital growing? Is Lisbon overtaking London as Europe tech-capital, and what are the lessons, if any, from Silicon Valley to the unrealised Silicon Roundabout? The founder of London’s most forward-looking accelerators, Second Home, and architect of the city’s innovation policy addressed these and other questions.
Event materials
Audio
Listen to
podcast
Profiles
Rohan Silva
Rohan Silva is a Senior Visiting Fellow at LSE Cities. He is the co-founder of Second Home, a social enterprise that uses radical architecture to support innovation and entrepreneurship in cities around the world. He was previously Senior Policy Adviser to British Prime Minister David Cameron, where he worked across all areas of policy, but was particularly passionate about enterprise, innovation and technology. He was responsible for developing key policies to improve the environment for enterprise in the UK, such as the Entrepreneur Visa, Entrepreneur Relief, angel investment tax breaks, and the Government’s Open Data agenda. In addition, he created the British Government’s Tech City initiative, which supports the growth of the technology cluster in East London, and also instigated the Government’s Life Science Strategy in 2011, as well as the follow-up strategy in 2012 focused on genomics and bioinformatics. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art and a World Economic Forum ‘Young Global Leader’.
Ricky Burdett
Ricky Burdett is Professor of Urban Studies at the London School of Economics (LSE), and director of LSE Cities and the Urban Age project. He is a member of the Mayor of London’s Cultural Leadership Board, and was chief advisor on Architecture and Urbanism for the London 2012 Olympics and architectural advisor to the Mayor of London from 2001 to 2006. He was director of the International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2006. With Deyan Sudjic he is co-editor of The Endless City (2007) and Living in the Endless City (2011) and, with Philipp Rode Shaping Cities in an Urban Age (2018).