The Great Stagnation

SUMMIT 2023

About
Speakers
Schedule
Media
Resources

Speakers & chairs

Speakers & chairs

“The Great Stagnation conference brought together some brilliant people to discuss one of the most pressing issues of our time: how to ensure that the UK actually deploys the technologies we’ve invented so that they can contribute to human flourishing.”

Conference attendee

Keynote speaker

Tyler Cowen

The keynote speaker for the event is renowned economist Tyler Cowen of the Mercatus Center, George Mason University, whose influential book The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better.

Professor Tim Besley

Professor of Development Economics, London School of Economics; member, National Infrastructure Commission; co-author of Investing for Prosperity; President, Royal Economic Society; editor, Economica

Sam Bowman

Founder and editor of Works in Progress at Stripe; publisher of the Consumer Surplus newsletter; former executive director, Adam Smith Institute

Nicholas Boys Smith

Chair of the Office for Place Advisory Board at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities; founder and director of Create Streets.

 

Matt Clifford MBE

Chair of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA); co-founder, Entrepreneur First; entrepreneur, investor and writer.

Professor Diane Coyle CBE

Co-director of the Bennett Institute for Public Policy, University of Cambridge; director of The Productivity Institute; author of Cogs and Monsters; Senior Independent Member of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Council

Professor David Edgerton

Founding director of the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, King’s College London; author of The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900 and Science, Technology and the British Industrial ‘Decline’, 1870-1970

 

Logan Graham

Technical staff, Anthropic; former Special Adviser to the Prime Minister

Andy Haldane

Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA); chair of the UK government Levelling Up Advisory Council and former Permanent Secretary for Levelling Up at the Cabinet Office; former Chief Economist at the Bank of England

Anton Howes

Head of Innovation Research, The Entrepreneurs Network; editor of the ‘Age of Invention’ newsletter.

Saffron Huang

Technologist; co-director of the Collective Intelligence Project,

Inaya Folarin Iman

Head of Events and Engagement at Civic Future; journalist

Professor Deirdre McCloskey

Distinguished Professor Emerita of Economics and of History, University of Illinois at Chicago; author of Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World

Munira Mirza

Chief Executive of Civic Future; former Director of the No 10 Policy Unit

James Phillips

Former Special Adviser to the Prime Minister & Secretary of State for Science and Technology; co-creator ARIA

Benjamin Reinhardt

CEO of nonprofit ‘sci-fi’ researchers Speculative Technologies; formerly at Magic Leap

Sam Richards

CEO of Britain Remade; former special advisor at No.10 Downing Street, working on energy and the environment

Matt Ridley

Author of How Innovation Works and The Evolution of EverythingThe Times columnist; founding chairman, International Centre for Life, Newcastle; former House of Lords science and technology select committee member

John Thornhill

Innovation editor and technology columnist at the Financial Times

Lord Sainsbury of Turville

Lord Sainsbury of Turville, former member of the House of Lords; Chancellor of the University of Cambridge; former Minister of Science and Innovation; former chairman, J. Sainsbury plc; author of Windows of Opportunity: How Nations Create Wealth

Marc Warner

CEO at data-led decision-making scale-up Faculty AI; UK government AI Council member; former Physics fellow, Harvard University

Stian Westlake

Executive Chair of the Economic and Social Research Council (@ESRC); co-author of Capitalism Without Capital and Restarting the Future

Rachel Wolf

Founding Partner of Public First; Former No 10 education and innovation adviser