What does the future hold for Microsofts UK Innovation programme?
Our main aim is to be supportive of what goes on as opposed to driving programmes. What I do see as entirely possible is a pretty big competition with decent VC backing around the tune of £20m where we do something like Idea Idol. How else do we pull the VC community, academia, innovators and entrepreneurs together into an arena where venture capitalists can get much better access to early ideas that have other experts like Microsoft working on it? I see Microsoft working with a number of other players in the industry and with government and academia to run more competitions to drive better innovation and see the best innovations getting funding that’s where our main interest is externally. The key point is about helping others innovate on our platform as opposed to driving our own innovation and I think there are real reasons why we can be optimistic about innovation in the UK.
