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
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
echnologist; 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 Everything; The 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