Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Where are the UK start-ups

Tom Coates at Plasticbag.org asks Where are all the UK start-ups? Good question and he has an answer:

"So what is it that stops us making great things, starting start-ups and building for money? I contend that in part it's shame. Certainly the business people of Britain seem to be - at a certain level - highly uncomfortable with the existence of technical people. They're not a resource to be exploited, or people to collaborate with. The nerdy people who make and create seem to be shuffled to the side, kept in the background, so as not to curdle the canapés at the business meet and greets that are the real motivators of British business. The businessman and the creative technologist seem to be forced into two camps so repulsed by one another (betrayed by dot.com?) that they just circle at a distance, each almost refusing to admit the other exists. So the business people look towards the stable money and wait for the innovations to come in from abroad, or leap clumsily onto bandwagons with the help of the visionless, while the technologists dogmatically avoid anything that looks like it might have been sullied with the hint of a business model."

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