Britain's pattern of reinvention
The UK has reinvented itself before. Coal powered the Industrial Revolution. Factories made Britain the workshop of the world. When manufacturing moved elsewhere, the country shifted to financial services and became a global centre for capital.
Each shift created prosperity and left people behind. Each time, one dominant industry defined the next era.
This time is different.A UK reinvention in 2025 is probably not one thing. It is more likely four to six areas that work together. The most important is using software to make slow, expensive processes faster and more reliable.
Six areas
A credible version looks something like this.
1. Cheaper, more reliable energy
Everything modern, from computing to heavy industry, depends on affordable, reliable power. The UK needs more clean generation, more storage, better grid connections and firm power from nuclear and other sources.
Cheaper energy lowers costs across the entire economy.
2. Automation across every sector
Not a handful of technology companies, but: routine, repetitive work in every sector gets automated.
The UK is well placed for this. It has strong professional services, a large health and care sector, extensive public administration, complex logistics and sophisticated financial services.
If this is done well, the result is what has been missing for 15 years: productivity growth.
3. Life sciences as an export industry
The UK has real strengths: universities, a research base and the NHS as a potential testing ground, provided procurement and data governance improve. The priority is faster trials and approvals, better technology purchasing and more capacity to go from laboratory to factory.
4. Advanced manufacturing in the high-value segment
Britain will not compete with China on mass manufacturing. It can succeed in aerospace, precision engineering, robotics components, medical devices, defence and high-end materials. The model is closer to German or Japanese capability, with stronger software foundations.
5. Housing and planning reform
This sounds dull. It may be the single biggest improvement to quality of life. If Britain builds more homes where jobs are, it gets lower living costs, higher real wages, greater labour mobility and less pressure between generations.
This is one of the few changes that genuinely makes life better for most people, not just a few.
6. Creative and cultural exports, modernised
The UK already performs well in music, film, television, design, advertising and games. The task is to make that base more technical: virtual production, game engines used as industrial tools, intellectual property, platforms and tooling. This is a real export industry if treated as infrastructure, not an afterthought.
The difficult part
The UK can reinvent itself. The areas are clear. The difficulty is in execution.
The recurring obstacles are:
- Planning: everything takes too long to approve
- Grid and infrastructure delivery: building is too slow
- Procurement: public-sector buying is not working well
- Skills and training: too few people can do the work
- Regional transport: people cannot move easily to where they are needed
- Policy consistency: rules change too often
These are not technical problems. They are institutional problems. They help explain why UK productivity has been essentially flat for 15 years.
Where we are focusing
At MakeMoreDigital, we have chosen a narrow area where a small, experienced team can make a difference: automating slow, expensive processes in regulated industries.
In plain terms: make Britain's compliance-heavy, paper-heavy processes faster and more reliable. Start at home. Look at export later.
Here is why this focus makes sense:
Expensive processes are an opportunity
Professional services, financial compliance, healthcare administration, government processes — these are all areas where:
- The UK has genuine expertise and scale
- Processes are slow, expensive and paper-heavy
- Regulation creates barriers to entry, which matters for serious work
- Automation can produce large improvements, not small ones
- Trust and governance matter, which is a UK strength
What we build
We build business software for organisations where compliance and auditability matter.
That means:
- Systems that handle document processing, triage and classification
- Workflow automation that maintains complete audit trails
- Systems that work within regulatory requirements, not around them
- Tools that make experienced staff more productive, not redundant
Why governance matters
Many technology companies treat governance as an afterthought. We treat it as the core requirement.
When automating processes in financial services, healthcare or government, you need:
- Complete traceability of every automated decision
- Human accountability at every step
- Audit trails that satisfy regulators
- Security that meets institutional requirements
This is difficult. It is also why many technology companies struggle to sell to the organisations that would benefit most from automation.
The opportunity for UK companies
For organisations in regulated industries considering this area:
Where it applies: professional services, financial services, healthcare operations, government administration What it offers: expensive, slow, compliance-heavy processes made faster and more reliable, with full auditability maintained. Why now:- The technology has reached the point where this is practical
- Regulatory pressure is increasing
- Staff costs are rising
- The UK has the expertise to do this properly
- Experienced engineers who understand both technology and governance
- Methods designed for regulated environments
- A record of delivery in demanding contexts
- UK-based, UK-focused, UK-accountable
What needs to change nationally
For this to work across the country, the UK needs to:
1. Improve procurement: Government and NHS buying processes make it too hard for useful companies to sell to them. This is not mainly about more money. It is about buying better.
2. Create regulatory testing environments: Let companies test automation in controlled settings before full deployment. The FCA has done this for financial technology; the same approach is needed for AI in other sectors.
3. Invest in the right skills: Not just technical skills, but domain expertise combined with technical capability. A lawyer who understands AI is more useful in legal automation than a technologist who does not understand law.
4. Maintain policy consistency: Companies will not invest in UK-focused products if the rules may change next year. Stable, predictable policy is what is needed.
Summary
The UK's next reinvention will not be a single industry. It will be a broad improvement in how work gets done.
The opportunity is real. The technology is ready. The question is whether the institutions can adapt quickly enough.
At MakeMoreDigital, we are not waiting for national policy to sort itself out. We are building the tools and methods that let organisations automate slow processes now, with the governance and accountability that regulated industries require.
If that is relevant to your organisation, get in touch.
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*Chris Barry is the founder of MakeMoreDigital, a software studio that builds applications for organisations where compliance and auditability matter.*