The proverbial teenage geek making millions designing apps in his bedroom is at the heart of our twenty-first-century vision of entrepreneurship and there is particular excitement around tech start-ups. The number of newly registered businesses rocketed by 20% in 2014. Filmed at the Battle of Ideas, the panel ask if in glamorising the virtues of being one’s own boss, do we neglect the reality that most of us will work for others? And as many of the most successful entrepreneurs seemed to have been spurred on by doing badly at school, are educational silver bullets missing the point? Or does our obsession with small start-ups blind us to the UK’s wider economic problems?
The speakers are Amali de Alwis, CEO of Code First: Girls; George Hull, director of Bloc and Autumn Street Studios; Kevin McCullagh, product strategist and founder of Plan; Kevin Mole, associate professor and head of entrepreneurship and innovation at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick. The chair is Mark Birbeck, internet software and big data consultant.
