UK, Own Your Success

Forbes

2 days ago

By Dr John Mullins, Associate Professor of Management Practice in Marketing and Entrepreneurship, London Business School
I was drawn to Britain at the turn of the millennium because it was bristling with entrepreneurial promise. From biotech to branding, from Camden to Cambridge, this country was once the envy of Europe for its start-up spirit. I'd built businesses before I taught the subject - some succeeded, one failed - but I never doubted my courage, creativity, or nous. I'm an American, and we celebrate business endeavour - winners and losers alike.
Today, I'm less certain about Britain. Not about the talent - brilliance still abounds - but about the pervasive melancholy streak Camilla Cavendish rightly identified in her recent Financial Times column, 'Britain needs to unleash the spirit of entrepreneurship.' That nagging belief that the country's best days are behind it has grown louder. Britain remains a crucible of scientific and creative genius, but too often fails to turn that genius into scaled businesses and enduring prosperity.
At London Business School, I meet brilliant minds every week - many from abroad - who still look to Britain as a launchpad. Yet the scaffolding that once made the country fertile ground for high-growth ventures is rusting. Regulatory burdens pile up. Risk aversion has been enshrined in policy. And a stubborn cultural allergy to ambition persists - a hangover from the C.P. Snow era referred to by Cavendish, when the literary elite snubbed the scientist and, by extension, the entrepreneur.
The Times recently put it bluntly: despite world-class financial and academic infrastructure, UK entrepreneurs are starved of growth-stage funding. Traditional institutions avoid risk. Pension funds barely touch high-growth private equity. The result? Innovation stalls in the so-called 'valley of death' - that dangerous gap between academic discovery and commercial viability.
Meanwhile, the world isn't waiting. Poland, with its ravaged 20th-century history, is setting economic agendas in parts of Europe. South Korea built a tech juggernaut in one generation. And the US - where professors wear patent filings like medals - continues to surge ahead precisely because risk is celebrated, not pathologised. Britain invented the Industrial Revolution and gave the world Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Ada Lovelace, Tim Berners-Lee. Even Stephen Hawking, who understood black holes better than most understand balance sheets, knew that collaboration between thinking and doing is where magic happens.
And yet today, too many UK start-ups hit a wall at scale. When an American titan like Larry Ellison spots promise in Oxford and invests £100mn, it should be a wake-up call. If Ellison believes in the UK, why don't more British investors?
Britain's COVID-19 response proved it can move fast. Scientists sequenced the virus in days, vaccines rolled out with breathtaking speed, and treatments saved millions. That wasn't bureaucracy - that was British grit, intellect, and agility unleashed. But in peacetime, the nation often retreats into suspicion: frowning on success, moaning about profit, and wrapping ambition in red tape. DeepMind's founders had to sell to Google to grow. Data centres are penalised with high energy costs. Industrial strategies are promised, then undermined.
This isn't just bad economics. It's a cultural betrayal. The UK must teach its children - and remind its adults - that entrepreneurship is not a fallback plan; it is a noble calling. Honour not only those who publish papers, but those who build, sell, risk, and employ. Celebrate not just Dyson, but the next hundred Dysons-in-waiting. And yes, reward failure as the tuition fee for success.
Britain needs to stop being so terribly British about ambition. Self-deprecation may be charming after dinner, but it is fatal to scale. The country still has the brains. What it needs now is the courage - and the capital - to build again.
An award-winning teacher and scholar and one of the world's foremost thought leaders in entrepreneurship, John Mullins brings to his teaching and research 20 years of executive experience in high-growth retailing firms, including two ventures he founded and one he took public. He is the author of several best-selling books with his most recent, Break the Rules! The Six Counter-Conventional Mindsets of Entrepreneurs that Can Help Anyone Change the World, delving into the mindsets that enable world-class entrepreneurs to challenge assumptions, overcome obstacles, mitigate risk, and sometimes change the world.