Innovator of the Year Awards: Business Services and AI
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.3 • 826 Ratings
🗓️ 6 November 2023
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Listeners will have heard businesses in all sorts of fields – from consumer goods to health technology, from sustainability to the cutting edge of British engineering. But what about the companies that make these businesses work? The behind-the-scenes, boiler room people who offer services to businesses themselves. These days, with advancement in artificial intelligence, their work has been made more effective than ever before. Britain, after all, brought us Alan Turing and Tim Berners-Lee.
Martin Vander Weyer, The Spectator's business editor, judges the awards and hosts this podcast along with three other judges: Melissa Readman, partner and investor director at ESM Investments, a fund which invests in early stage companies; Caroline Theobald CBE, an entrepreneur and co-owner of FIRST, which provides enterprise training to young people and business leaders; and Michelle White, co-head of Investec's private office.
The finalists in this category are:
- Igloo Vision, which creates immersive spaces using virtual reality for companies and organisations.
- Synthesia, an AI video creation platform that produces videos quickly and cheaply.
- ComplyAdvantage, which uses AI and machine learning to carry out financial due diligence for corporate clients.
- SoPost, which uses a digital platform to help streamline supply chains for retailers.
- Good-Loop, which converts clicks on online ads into revenue for partnership charities.
- Yoti, which provides digital IDs for identity verification.
- Exclaimer, which provides email signature solutions for the marketing and other needs of businesses.
- LegalVision, which provides legal advice on an affordable, subscription basis.
- Finboot, which uses blockchain to help businesses track the environmental impact of their supply chains.
- Huboo Technologies Ltd, which takes care of the storage and shipping needs of e-commerce businesses that don't have their own warehouses.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to this podcast in a series of five podcasts for this year's Spectator Economic Innovator of the Year Awards, sponsored by InvestTech. |
| 0:16.9 | I'm Martin van der Weir. I'm the business editor of The Spectator, and I'm one of the founders of these awards, which are now in their sixth year. |
| 0:25.9 | Each year since 2018, we have travelled the country, north and south, eastern west, in search of the most exciting, the boldest new ventures, entrepreneur-led, high-growth, UK businesses that are |
| 0:40.1 | innovating and disrupting in their respective industries and sectors. |
| 0:47.0 | Listeners to this series will have heard about businesses in every kind of field, from consumer |
| 0:52.1 | goods to advanced health technology and energy technologies, |
| 0:57.3 | sustainability and social purpose to the fore in many of them. |
| 1:03.3 | But behind every business, there's another set of businesses which offer services that help |
| 1:09.7 | businesses run more efficiently. |
| 1:12.5 | Those are the kind of businesses that are now making advances in artificial intelligence, for example, and uses of big data. |
| 1:23.5 | Now, the UK has a great history in artificial intelligence, in computer science. |
| 1:29.3 | We can claim Alan Turing. |
| 1:30.9 | We can claim Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web. |
| 1:35.8 | But how are we doing these days? |
| 1:37.9 | Are we still at the cutting edge? |
| 1:39.9 | Well, we'll give you some examples today that I hope will persuade you |
| 1:43.8 | that British entrepreneurs |
| 1:45.5 | really are at the cutting edge in this sector, business services and uses of artificial |
| 1:50.7 | intelligence. |
| 1:52.7 | We tend to get through in this category and I have with me three judges to help me talk about |
| 1:59.6 | them. |
| 1:59.9 | I'll introduce them one by one, starting with our |
... |
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