Podcast Special: the North East's Economic Disruptors

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The Spectator

News Commentary, News, Daily News, Society & Culture

4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 29 July 2019

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Human progress has depended on economic disruptors since long before the advent of the internet. Motor cars remained rare luxuries until a disruptor called Henry Ford perfected the Model T assembly line. Today’s online auction, home-stay, ride-share and crowdfunding sites have generated markets and money flows that barely existed before, to the great benefit of providers and consumers. Today’s manufacturing methods — from 3D printing to advanced bioscience — have dramatically reduced the time and capital required to produce vital products.

So, who are the companies that are rewriting the rules in 2019? Following the success of last year's inaugural Economic Disruptor of the Year Awards, The Spectator and Julius Baer has come together again to celebrate creative entrepreneurship across the UK.

In this first of a short series of podcasts, The Spectator's Business Editor, Martin Vander Weyer, speak to the competition's three regional judges for the North East of England about the finalists in that region. Tune in to find more about modular homes, conductive fabrics, innovative office sharing, and the future of car insurance.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to this, the first in a series of podcasts marking the Economic Disruptor Awards
0:12.3	finals for 2019. This is the second year that the Spectator has made these awards under the
0:20.6	sponsorship of the private bank, Julius Baer.
0:23.6	And we're talking to you today from the offices of Julius Baer in Leeds,
0:28.2	overlooking Leeds Railway Station.
0:30.7	And our host here is their senior executive for the Yorkshire and the Northeast region,
0:37.0	who's Martin Cuthbert, who will
0:38.9	introduce himself in a moment. The Disruptor Awards, I'm sure our regular listeners are
0:44.7	familiar with this, is about identifying, exciting, mostly quite new businesses from all
0:53.1	across the UK in all sectors that are disrupting their
0:58.3	marketplace. That means in terms of product technology, price, access, social purpose, a whole
1:06.6	range of things, but they are really changing the marketplaces in which they operate and they are
1:12.3	demonstrating entrepreneurship and imagination and innovation and they have the scale and the capital
1:21.0	behind them to grow to national size businesses or even international, even perhaps global businesses.
1:28.9	So that's what we're looking for.
1:31.0	And in each of the non-London regions, we've done that and picked four finalists.
1:37.4	And for the region, which is Yorkshire and the northeast, we have just come from talking to
1:43.2	the four finalists. First, what I want to do is introduce my
1:46.3	friends and judges who are with me here today, starting with Martin Cuthbert of Julius Bear.
1:52.2	Good afternoon. I'm Martin Cuthbert. I'm head of the Northeast region for Julius Bear.
1:57.7	Julius Bear has a rich history of working with entrepreneurs, business owners and
2:02.9	their families over the last 130 years and in the UK in the last 50 years. And we're absolutely
	...

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