Building the Ecosystem: What 150 Innovation Leaders Revealed About the Future of UK Startups

When you can't outspend Silicon Valley or China, trust becomes your competitive advantage.

That reframing opened the Ecosystem Exchange in Edinburgh two weeks ago, where ChangeSchool LDN MD Viren Lall joined nearly 150 ecosystem builders, university innovation leaders, and practitioners grappling with a crucial question: how do we build infrastructure that helps AI-native startups and deep tech ventures actually scale in the UK?

What emerged from two days of candid conversation wasn't a neat set of solutions, but something potentially more valuable: a clear-eyed assessment of what's working, what isn't, and why trust might be the UK's secret weapon in the global innovation race.

When Trust Becomes Your Competitive Advantage

Rob Kenedi opened the first day with a provocation that reframed the entire conversation: in an age where technology has become a commodity, trust is what differentiates. His keynote positioned AI not as a purely technical challenge but as a storytelling problem. The UK cannot outspend Silicon Valley or China, but it can win through creativity, courage, and the distinctive stories we tell about our approach to innovation.

This theme of trust surfaced repeatedly throughout the two days. When Natalia Loza led an interactive session on building truly AI-native solutions rather than AI-enabled ones, participants grappled with what this distinction actually means. AI-native ventures require different infrastructure, different evaluation frameworks, and fundamentally different thinking about data, computational scaling, and algorithmic trust.

This isn't just technical architecture. It's about redesigning how we assess readiness and build support systems capable of understanding algorithmic-first products.

The panel discussion that followed, moderated by Steve Brown, featuring Allan Cannon from Deep Signal, Andy Elphick from Anglia Ruskin University, Liz Scott from Turing Innovation Catalyst Manchester, and James MacDonald from Google, explored these challenges further. How do you evaluate progress when the product is fundamentally algorithmic? What metrics matter when computational efficiency can be as important as customer acquisition?

These aren't abstract questions. They affect how accelerators design programmes, how investors assess potential, and how support organisations allocate limited resources.

The University Question

The afternoon shifted focus to a sometimes uncomfortable question: Are universities evolving quickly enough to match the pace of technological change?

Dr Olga Kozlova's keynote challenged participants to examine whether academic institutions are genuinely driving innovation beyond research outputs. The subsequent interactive session, led by Sarah Barratt Ball, explored how to optimise funding channels, build effective support programmes, and collaborate more deliberately to prevent the siloed approaches that plague many ecosystems.

What emerged from the panel discussion - featuring voices from Antler, Edinburgh Innovations, CodeBase, Google, and the University of Edinburgh - wasn't a tidy solution but an honest acknowledgement of complexity. Universities sit at the intersection of talent development, policy influence, and commercial impact. Making limited resources go further requires clearer thinking about what different institutions are designed to achieve and how they can complement rather than duplicate each other's efforts.

The Conversations Between the Conversations

The evening reception at the Bayes Centre created space for what many participants later described as the most valuable part of the event: unstructured conversation. Over drinks and light food, discussions continued without formal structure. People shared implementation challenges, exchanged contact details, and discovered unexpected points of connection.

These informal exchanges between practitioners working in different regions and sectors revealed patterns that the formal sessions had hinted at but couldn't fully explore. The networking extended well into the evening, with small groups clustered around conversations about everything from specific funding mechanisms to the personal challenges of sustaining long-term ecosystem work.

National Strategy Meets Regional Reality

Day two opened with Chris Neumann from Creative Destruction Lab offering a perspective on how UK startup ecosystems can learn from, connect with, and leverage Silicon Valley. The subsequent fireside chat between Jennifer Forbes Iannolo, Sarita Runeberg from Maria 01, and Noodles Groves from Natural Velocity explored how other nations approach ecosystem building and what the UK might adapt from international examples.

The interactive session led by Emilio Cuevas invited participants to share experiences of how the national innovation agenda connects with what's happening on the ground. The conversations revealed both alignment and disconnection. Funding exists, but often doesn't reach the right stage companies. Support programmes proliferate, but coordination remains weak. Intent is strong, but execution fragments across regions and institutions.

The final panel, moderated by Stephen Coleman, brought together Andrew Roughan from Plexal, David Herbada from Fikra Ventures, Jennifer Craw from Opportunity North East, and Mike Jackson from Venture Cafe, and surfaced a central tension: the UK needs both national strategy and regional distinctiveness. London's ecosystem operates differently from Edinburgh's, which operates differently from Manchester's or Belfast's. Effective national coordination must account for these differences rather than imposing uniformity.

What Matters Most for Ecosystem Builders

Two weeks on, what lingers isn't the content of any particular session but the cumulative effect of sustained, open conversation. Ecosystem builders face similar challenges regardless of location: misaligned incentives, fragmented funding, difficulty measuring what actually matters, and the perpetual tension between short-term political cycles and long-term capacity building.

The event succeeded because it created space for practitioners to acknowledge these difficulties without defensiveness. The willingness to name problems is the first step towards addressing them. The conversations at Edinburgh Futures Institute demonstrated that the UK has people with deep experience, clear-eyed assessment of challenges, and genuine commitment to building something better.

Why This Matters for Leadership Development

For those working in commercialisation and leadership development, the lessons from Edinburgh were particularly relevant. The support that matters most for ecosystem builders isn't always technical expertise, though that has value. It's creating the conditions for honest reflection, where setbacks can be examined without triggering crisis, and where the question "what are we actually trying to achieve here?" can be asked without fear.

This mirrors what ChangeSchool LDN has long understood about effective leadership development: transformation happens when leaders have the space and support to examine challenges honestly, test assumptions, and build the capabilities they need for long-term success. Our work with university innovation centers and accelerators demonstrates this principle in action, creating frameworks that enable practitioners to navigate complexity rather than offering oversimplified solutions.

The infrastructure that helps deep tech ventures scale isn't fundamentally different from the infrastructure that helps leaders scale their impact. Both require trust, clarity about what success looks like, and systems designed around actual needs rather than inherited assumptions.

The conversations at Edinburgh Futures Institute revealed an ecosystem grappling with complexity, but doing so with intelligence, honesty, and commitment. That's exactly the kind of environment where genuine innovation, whether in startups or in leadership, becomes possible.

Viren Lall is Managing Director of ChangeSchool LDN, a global award-winning executive education organisation. The Ecosystem Exchange was convened by CodeBase with support from Techscaler, Conception X, Plexal, Connected. Ventures and Barclays Eagle Labs.

Learn more about how ChangeSchool LDN partners with universities and accelerators here.

Be part of our growing community of innovators and leaders

Follow us on LinkedIn