Diane Coyle

4 weeks ago | cam.ac.uk | Diane Coyle

“Sluggish technology has hampered our public services for too long, and it’s costing us all a fortune in time and money,” said The Rt Hon Peter Kyle MP (Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology) announcing a shake-up for the public sector in January this year. All of us can testify to the sluggishness, whether it concerns (lack of) communication among medical staff caring for us or the challenges of dealing with the local council.

2 months ago | enlightenmenteconomics.com | Diane Coyle

It was the fact of a lecture by Dan Breznitz at the University of Manchester for National Productivity Week that alerted me to his book Innovation in Real Places. Sadly I couldn’t get to Manchester for the lecture but I really recommend the book. Its core argument is that the shape of innovative businesses depends on the specifics of their economic context, making the hope to become the next Silicon Valley a forlorn one for most places, and requiring innovation policy to be appropriately tailored.

2 months ago | enlightenmenteconomics.com | Diane Coyle

When you’ve seen as many ups and downs in the ranking of countries’ economic models as I have, it’s no surprise to learn that what was considered a sure-fire recipe for success at one time is portrayed as stagnation or sclerosis a decade or two later. The perceptions amplify relatively small differences in GDP growth, as the western economies tend to exhibit the same broad trends. Still, Wolfgang Munchau’s Kaput: The end of the German miracle was surprising.

Oct 9, 2024 | enlightenmenteconomics.com | Diane Coyle

I read Sam Freedman’s Failed State: Why Nothing Works and How We Fix It with a mixture of nods of recognition and gasps of disbelief. It’s all too apparentĀ  that – as the subtitle puts it – nothing works in aspects of life in the UK dependent in some way on the successful design and implementation of government policy (which is most aspects tbh).

Sep 29, 2024 | enlightenmenteconomics.com | Diane Coyle

Summer over in a flash, autumn wind and rain outside – perhaps cosy evenings will speed up both my reading and review-posting. I just finished AI Snake Oil by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, having long been a fan of the blog of the same name. The book is a really useful guide through the current hype. It distinguishes 3 kinds of AI: generative, predictive and content moderation AI – an interesting categorisation.