How does the UK turn world-class ideas into world-class companies, without selling the best outcomes abroad?
In this episode of Oxford+, host Susannah de Jager speaks with Lord William Hague, Chancellor of the University of Oxford and former UK Foreign Secretary, about the UK’s scale-up gap and what it will take to build an innovation economy that keeps more value at home. They discuss why universities sit at the centre of growth, how pension capital and other long-term investors can help close the funding gap, and why procurement and slow decision-making can quietly kill promising companies before they reach commercial scale.
The conversation lands in the reality of the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor, which government has positioned as a long-term national growth project. Recent reporting on the corridor highlights the scale of the ambition and the industries driving it, alongside the claim it could add £78bn to the economy by 2035. From foreign takeovers of UK spinouts to the need for faster infrastructure delivery, this episode offers a clear, systems-level view of what Oxford’s ecosystem reveals about the UK’s economic future.