Growth Incorporated

Growth Incorporated is...growing! We’re looking for strategy and policy people to join the team, initially on a part time or fixed term basis. You’ll have experience of working in business and/or government, be excited to think creatively and strategically about business challenges and connecting them to big national missions. You’ll be self-motivated and happy to work autonomously, and you'll enjoy the ambiguity and change that comes with a growing small business! In return, we can offer you loads of flexibility, really interesting and high impact work and founders who aren't above an embarrassing selfie. Message Tony Danker or Helen Puddefoot directly if interested. growth-inc.com

News Alert “Chancellor Endorses Growth Incorporated PLC” Well, almost. Sorry, it’s just that we’re very excited today because Growth is rarely headline news. It’s not really talked about at dinner parties. It’s generally regarded as a worthy cause if a little dull.?But growth is back in vogue everyone! Mainly because the UK Government need it in the short term to be able to afford the increases in public spending needed for the NHS, Social Care, Defence, Education and so on. And they need it in the long term to be able to increase wages after a huge surge in cost of living which looms largest still for voters as their key economic concern. The growth debate seems chaotic right now. The Chancellor’s speech today was about airport expansions, trains going sideways, planning reform and Cornish lithium. Yet the last Budget raised employers’ national insurance hitting jobs and wages. We’re also debating how to improve the EU trading relationship and our relationship with Trump.?How to make sense of it all? Here’s a quick explainer using amateur economics. According to the GDP formula, our GDP is the sum of consumption, government spending, positive net trade and business investment. If any of these goes up, so therefore, does GDP i.e. we grow. Much of the confusion on growth is about which one you think needs to go up more and what measures you think can achieve that. 1) Consumption. If everyone gets higher wages and is incentivised to spend more in shops, growth will happen. True. But inflation has taken a real toll and it’s not likely that a big tax cut for everyone will change that, unlike, say, in 2008/9 2) Government spending. It's a quick way to boost growth which is why we like to see big public projects, shovels in ground etc. However, there’s only so much Government can afford to spend, and that’s before you get to the political debate as to whether too much Government in the economy is a bad thing ? 3) Positive net trade. Exporting more than you import in turn means you have more money in ‘the bank’, which the UK doesn’t do today. This is why people argue that the best thing to do is revisit the EU Trade Deal. ? So all these theories are right. But the one the government is focusing on most is business investment. This has been the UK’s serial weakness in the GDP formula. It explains all the “supply side” reforms the Government wants to make. Easier planning; easier transport; less regulation; investment tax cuts and so on. They are right to focus on all this. The proof - whether they drive up investment - will be in the pudding.? In short, whether these policies work and produce growth will be down to whether they change the investment mindset of firms. Will your company start thinking: ok, this is the right time to hire more people, open new factories, buy new software, launch new products and services? If the answer is yes, then we have achieved the elixir – growth incorporated in every company. ??

This UK Government are “newbies” – next week they come of age It’s popular to say the new UK Government has had a terrible first 100 days. It’s completely overdone. In policy and substance terms they’ve actually done a really nice job. In political and comms terms? Not so much. But last week they published an outline Industrial Strategy. We've seen a lot of these and we must say, it’s pretty good. It prioritises sectors that are high productivity and high comparative advantage for Britain. That is a big deal. The previous Industrial Strategy ended up catering to all sectors, scared of having winners and losers. The truth is we must as a country focus on high productivity sectors. And comparative advantage matters. Post Brexit, the UK suddenly looks like a sub scale economy. Economics has gone continental. Take green industries for example. The US green stimulus is post $500 billion. The Europeans is c$300 billion and the Chinese post $1 trillion. In the UK, Labour had to give up on ￡28 billion and settle for single digits. When you’re small you have to play to your strengths. The Government has also moved really fast on both energy and health reform. They are grappling with economic inactivity. They are linking immigration and skills. They are going after planning. These are really big leaps forward which can be legacy achievements. The winter fuel allowance, the internal staff changes, the perks problems all got more attention of course. They filled a vaccum and it all now looks like such classic rookie errors. Remember we have just handed the running of a country to a group of people, most of whom have never had middle management positions, and now are CEOs of billion-dollar enterprises! This is what always happens with new governments of course and we should learn the lessons for next time. Yet, following the Industrial Strategy of last week, next week is when the economic strategy of the country gets real. There is a lot of fervour about the Budget and what will happen to capital gains tax and one year spending settlements. These are important to get right and show whether the Government is resilient and maturing. More significant is the Business Tax Roadmap which will set out the tax landscape for the next five years. If the Chancellor can deliver a predictable tax regime alongside the Government’s big majority, that is the stability "couplet" that international investors crave. At a time when the US, France, Germany and others confront instability, suddenly the UK can jump up the league table of great places to invest. And if the Government next week can show precision with their public investment budget – focusing on what investment is catalytic to private sector investment – this Government will be off to the races on tackling poor UK investment performance. The Chancellor has rightly identified this as the kernel of our poor productivity and growth record. So next week it really begins. Probation period over.

We are delighted to be working with Okana a goal placemaking consultancy launched today. The question of how we build great places to live, work and thrive is a huge part of this country's growth story and Okana are leading the way with vision and energy. Excited for the future! https://www.okana.global/