Leader: UK innovation - don't knock it

Attendees at the silicon.com CIO Forum yesterday hit out at a perceived lack of innovation in UK businesses and bemoaned the risk-averse culture and outdated attitudes towards technology.

It's a fair point but one which should be defended. Firstly to address possibly the most justifiable accusation: the issue of risk aversion.

UK businesses are probably more risk averse than US firms - and far less likely to gamble. And we should probably congratulate the likes of Enron and WorldCom for the gambles they've taken.

For UK businesses the technology revolution represents a far less dramatic age in their existence. Something which has become a phenomenon in the last 10 years represents little more than a passing second compared to the lifetime of some 200-year-old UK company. It goes without saying that they are far less likely to adopt technology than a 10-year-old US company which has grown up within the age of technology.

That's not to say UK companies shouldn't be adopting technology, but nor should we be claiming this state of affairs comes as a surprise.

More concerning, however, at the other end of the scale is the perceived notion that UK companies aren't also at the vanguard of technology innovation. In the mobile space in particular the UK is leading the Western world.

In terms of the innovative use of technology to create online businesses, the UK is showing the way for many other nations worldwide. What people are allowing themselves to be blinded by is scale not innovation. lastminute.com is no less innovative than Amazon.com in terms of using technology to create an online business - it is simply smaller.

Similarly could you really argue Betfair.com is any less innovative than Sports.com simply because it is still in business? If anything Betfair is the most innovative user of technology and its challenges have been among the most impressively met in the industry.

The UK accounts for one per cent of the world's population but five per cent of its technology implementation. It could easily be argued that we are punching above our weight.

Also speaking at the silicon.com CIO Forum was Mike Lynch, founder of Autonomy, another leading UK innovator. He warned against following the latest fashions for the sake of it, yet it's possibly fair to suggest the panel levelling criticism at the UK was doing just that - indulging in a little Brit bashing, because it's the done thing.

But let's save that for the tennis players.