Why London’s tech ecosystem is #3 globally and rising with Ben Bilsland

In this episode of The Digital Lighthouse, host Zoe Cunningham is joined by Ben Bilsland, a Partner and Head of Technology Industry at RSM UK, to dive into a wide-ranging conversation about the future of UK tech and macro trends shaping it.

Discover:

• Why the UK remains a global tech powerhouse
• How AI is reshaping professional training and skill development across industries
• The critical balance between regulation and innovation in UK tech policy
• Why traditional approaches to professional development must evolve as AI automates entry-level tasks
• How the UK’s new industrial strategy supports tech growth through targeted investments and talent development
• The parallels between AI’s impact and historical technological revolutions like the printing press
• Why business leaders must actively engage with emerging technologies rather than claiming tech illiteracy

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Listen here:

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Episode Highlights:

• [03:37] – How AI transformed the risk conversation
• [06:49] – Leaders’ biggest misconceptions about AI
• [08:42] – UK tech’s place in the world
• [12:20] – A policy balancing act
• [16:21] – The talent pipeline dilemma

About our guests

Transcript

Transcript

[Zoe] (0:01 – 1:37)

Hello and welcome to The Digital Lighthouse, where we get inspiration from tech leaders, to help us navigate the exciting and ever-evolving world of digital transformation. We believe that meaningful conversations can illuminate the path forward, helping us harness the power of technology for innovation, scalability and sustainability.

Today, I’m delighted to be joined by Ben Bilsland, Partner and Head of Technology Industry at RSM UK. Ben brings a powerful lens to the world of digital change, combining deep-sector insight with a strong grasp of macroeconomics, policy, and what actually drives growth across the tech and media landscape. 

In this episode, we explore the UK’s role in the global tech economy, from AI’s evolving impact on productivity and GDP, to where government policy is helping or hindering progress, to how digital leaders can make smarter, more strategic decisions in an uncertain environment. And all in such a short space of time, Ben, welcome to The Digital Lighthouse.

[Ben] (1:38 – 1:43)

Well, thank you, and thank you for, I’ve never been introduced with so much gravitas. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. 

[Zoe] (1:43 – 2:03)

Let’s build on that, because it would be great if you could tell us a bit about your journey from technical advisor to industry eminence, how unique your journey has been. Can you walk us through how your professional and personal passions have converged in your current role, and what excites you most about operating at the intersection of tech and economics?

[Ben] (2:03 – 3:36)

Yeah, absolutely. So, I’m a trained chartered accountant, albeit before that a history degree, so kind of followed the usual routes of a historian at university, which is get a job afterwards. What I found as a trainee chartered accountant was I resonated most with media and tech companies.

I enjoyed working with them. So, as my career evolved, really focused on working with those sorts of businesses. And my time here at RSM, we have a very industry-driven approach. What we like to do is make sure that our clients are serviced by people who understand their industries. There’s a lot of training wrapped around that. And you touched on the industry eminence programme, which is a programme run out of the UK, US and Canadian firms here at RSM.

I spent three years working with our economics team, working with other industry experts, kind of really doubling down on building out my understanding of how the economy works, how data works in the economy, but also thinking how it works within the tech and media sector. And having kind of finished that three year training, I’m now in a role as our head of technology industry sector here at RSM. What that means is I work with people within the firm to support them and I’ll work with our technology and media clients.

And I also work directly with a number of our clients, which range from data centre builders to platform technologies, to even a digital yoga advisory business. So range of different backgrounds there across my passions. And, you know, I love technology businesses because their heart is innovation, I know a lot of people say that, but I think it resonates with me.

I really enjoy seeing the ways that it affects change and thinking about how the tech underpins the way that we work and live.

[Zoe] (3:37 – 3:53)

Fantastic. So you’ve been tracking the media and technology landscape for over a decade. And how have you seen the narrative around digital transformation shift, particularly, I think, in the way that businesses approach risk, innovation and long term strategy?

[Ben] (3:54 – 5:32)

Yeah, I think the biggest change for me was actually driven by the debates and the conversation around generative artificial intelligence. I really felt that in the 18 months after ChatGPT was sort of brought to market as Open Beta, I saw people ask more questions about what that meant. And I think, you know, we don’t have time now to debate the various ebbs and flows of that.

But I think the conversation ranged from dismissiveness to sensationalism, but actually a much more informed conversation about what does it mean to bring in these new technologies? You know, what do they rely on? Thinking more deeply about the ethics that sit behind that and thinking about maybe as we look to transform our businesses and lean more on the digital technologies, do we have to make compromises or put risk management in as well?

So to me, the last two or three years have been really interesting because it’s been an evolving conversation. And actually within businesses, I’ve seen a lot more business leaders reach out and say, “I’d like to understand a little bit more about this and not hide behind a misunderstanding of technology and say it’s outside of my job and say, I need to understand this.” And we talk about AI a lot.

And, you know, one thing we talk about around governance and policy and artificial intelligence is it’s not the responsibility of one business function. You can’t say, “Oh, the chief digital officer is responsible solely for it.” It actually cascades across the whole organisation, which means you then have to have the education across the workforce.

You have to have involvement and you have to have a strategy, which is definitely coming to play and we’re seeing a constant involvement. So I think to me, over 10 years, certainly has been an exciting year or two, the last two years.

[Zoe] (5:32 – 5:56)

And as you say, it’s always been the CEO’s responsibility for the technical direction and making sure the company is harnessing technological innovation. And perhaps what we’ve seen is this public awareness of this particular technological development is bringing that to the forefront. So it’s really interesting to hear you say that that’s changing how leaders are seeing their role.

[Ben] (5:57 – 6:49)

I think so. And I think also one of the drivers has been maybe the stories about functional redundancy of employees. So naturally as accountants, we do talk to CFOs and finance directors.

You know, one of the concerns in their team is a lot of the narrative is about, “Well, will the accountant be made redundant? What will happen? Are there going to be whole scale reductions in workforce numbers, just in that function?” And you could extend that across lots of different functions. 

And I think that’s what raised awareness as well, that a lot of people in C-suites realise not only do they have a role to understand it and what it means, but actually a role to understand it so they could hold their workforce close and understand how to reassure them that there’s still very much a plan for them. It might require retraining in 10 years. It may look very different, but I think a lot of the narrative around that really drove a quickfire need for understanding among C-suites.

[Zoe] (6:49 – 7:07)

Yeah, fantastic. So a kind of slight variation on that, as someone who speaks both the language of business and technology fluently, what are the misconceptions that you see leaders make when trying to either translate economic indicators into tech or similarly trying to kind of translate back again?

[Ben] (7:08 – 7:47)

Perhaps if we think bigger picture, I was talking to our own economist about, let’s talk about AI because we’re there, let’s start there. He was talking about a kind of trend across time that major seismic changes tend to be completely underestimated in the short term. And I do wonder with this technology, if we’ve kind of gone through the back end of a hype cycle, where now there’s a risk to kind of dismiss it as a disruptive force.

Whilst in fact, I think now is the time to maybe take stock and think about it more deeply and what it means and to gather the information we need to take it forward. So I think that’s something to me that really resonates and something to stay in mind.

[Zoe] (7:47 – 7:56)

Yeah. And again, like you’re saying, it’s underestimated and overestimated at the same time. It’s a bit like, has it fixed everything within six months?

“Oh no. Well, maybe there’s no value then.”

[Ben] (7:56 – 8:40)

“I used it once and it was rubbish. It told me that David Beckham played for Manchester United when he didn’t play for Manchester United, therefore it’s useless.” And it’s actually saying, “Well, I know you’re saying that, but do you not realise how brilliant it is? Even though it’s made that small factual error, it just needs to be trained better.” 

And also maybe an awareness of what’s happening around us. Like maybe I’ve seen people become more aware when they’re talking to a chatbot in, for example, in their transactions around customer care online.

I think now people are much more attuned to realise that behind it, there is a tool, not a human being. I think people are becoming more aware of what’s happening. And, you know, as we know, this technology is, it’s finding its way into business processes on a daily basis in lots of different ways.

It’s coming really rapidly.

[Zoe] (8:40 – 9:04)

Yeah, absolutely. So let’s try and like zoom out a bit. I’m sure we’ll come back to AI again, because like you say, it’s such a hot topic, but looking at the big picture, where do you see the UK’s tech sector currently sitting within the global digital economy, especially thinking about innovation, investment and scale-up potential?

So where’s the UK currently compared to the rest of the world?

[Ben] (9:04 – 11:15)

The United Kingdom is in a very good place. I think within the technology spectrum, the United States kind of dwarfs everything. It does that on a number of different metrics, in total number of companies, investment value, frankly, even just as simple as the largest tech companies are based in the United States.

So we all do follow their lead in a lot of ways around the way the world works. But the UK is a good place. You know, London is the third most valuable tech city in the world. It’s a very strong, vibrant tech ecosystem. I think some of those who live outside London might point to it and say, “Well, you know, could it do more? Could we have better regional ecosystems?”

I think the answer is absolutely yes. And there’s ways we can do that. But let’s not trash the fact that we have such a wonderful, buoyant city in the middle of our economy.

And let’s learn from them. I do think, to be honest, London does help with that. I think in terms of our position as an artificial intelligence leader, which is part of technology, a lot of the metrics point towards us as being second in the world in terms of exciting companies, thought leadership and ideas, funding levels.

I think that has to be carefully put into balance against the vast amounts of money being deployed in the United States. And I think the other thing that differs us from others in the landscape is we’re talking about legislation and frameworks. You know, the EU has a form of legislation and policy now.

The United States talks about it without too much in place, without getting into too much detail. Our position, you know, as the United Kingdom does allow us to kind of dictate our own terms, our own regulation here. And I think one of the things we’ll have to watch really carefully around this is making sure that the legislative frameworks we put in place around AI development and use find that really important balance between protecting people and businesses, but also encouraging innovation.

But I’m quite pro about this because I think if you have absolutely no legislation, you actually tend to have no innovation because there’s nothing to work around. You have to have a framework. But I think that’s an area that certainly our government needs to look at carefully as an area that they monitor.

And it won’t just be this government, it’ll be future governments as well. It’s going to be an evolving landscape.

[Zoe] (11:15 – 11:17)

It’s great that you’re so bullish.

[Ben] (11:17 – 11:18)

A good place to answer your question.

[Zoe] (11:19 – 11:24)

Yeah. And so pro UK. Like, it’s not a very British thing, is it, to be like, “Wow, you’re awesome.”

[Ben] (11:25 – 12:20)

Well, I was just going to say, like, look, before you mentioned your complaint, I will say it has slowed in the last year or two. That’s a firm, we track UK tech and corporations every quarter. We use it as a kind of dipstick on the health of the sector because you have a healthy early stage ecosystem that tends to indicate that things are looking well.

That has tailed off and has begun to stagnate certainly over the last year or so at this point. I think the key drivers here are enormous economic and world uncertainty. It really does stem back to perhaps the US election. There was uncertainty about how that would look. Obviously, since then, we’ve had the tariff uncertainty, other conflicts across the world. I think it’s generally led to a kind of depression of confidence.

But that said, we still have tens of thousands of new UK tech companies being incorporated each year. It’s still healthy. It’s just we haven’t seen the growth come back in.

So we have seen a little bit of slowdown over the last year or so.

[Zoe] (12:20 – 12:59)

But on the whole, it’s going well. So how well are the specific policies supporting the tech ecosystem? And are we seeing meaningful action?

Because if I look back at the detailed policies that I’ve kind of noticed as a non-specialist in terms of government policy, the one that really stands out is obviously SEIS in terms of really galvanising all these small businesses. And a lot of other policies seem to maybe have missed the mark or not garnered as much support. So where are we at right now?

[Ben] (13:00 – 13:04)

I think our government would still describe themselves as new. We’ll give them the benefit on that. Or maybe they wouldn’t.

But they are quite new. And being open came into play, had an autumn statement, which didn’t have that much detail in it, being open. Didn’t have kind of wholesale changes that people might have wanted.

And have moved forward saying, “Look, there’ll be more detail as we go.” That seems to have been a marker of their narrative, which is there’ll be more to come. And in early June, we’ve seen the industrial strategy launch.

Now that’s a really interesting policy document. Has a lot more detail in it. I think things in it that the UK tech sector would like to see.

Crucially, like digital and data is addressed directly in this industrial strategy. And it talks about things which are going to be good for UK tech. Talks about skills and talent development.

So it talks about investments in supporting bursaries, a programme called Tech First. Talks about AI upskilling, which is great. Talks about reforms to global talent attraction.

Whilst immigration is obviously a topic there’s lots of debate around, it is generally proven in research that where you have diverse founder teams and workforces, you have greater innovation, which feeds into tech. So visa reforms and fellowships and the ability to recruit and retain world-class talent is really important to having world-class innovation. So that’ll be welcomed, I think, by a lot of people.

And then there’s direct investment for AI growth zones, data centres, looking at support for the quantum technologies, plans around semiconductors. So lots of it in the industrial strategy, which will be welcomed. And perhaps the only slightly, when I say unfair challenge, maybe, will be, “Okay, well, these are large amounts of money, like, you know, two billion pounds for AI is dwarfed by the amounts being invested by some of the large US tech companies like OpenAI and that.”

But it’s better than nothing is what I would say. And it’s still a significant amount of money. But the thing that constantly surprises me about artificial intelligence is you can invest 100 million pounds in something and people will still say that’s not enough money. It’s just the amount of money flowing into this space. Amounts can seem both enormous and tiny. And I think that’s just a marker of the excitement around it.

[Zoe] (15:14 – 15:42)

And obviously the government’s walking a tightrope because you want to stimulate the private economy, not replace it. So that’s not the aim with any of the industrial strategy, right? It’s not saying we’re going to have government-owned AI and that will be innovation.

It’s about how do we, so then you’ve got the kind of headline policy and also the detailed implementation of that is going to, you know, as it kind of rolls out, that’s going to be super important as well.

[Ben] (15:43 – 16:21)

It talks about innovation. It talks about the idea of providing the funding and the support for, you know, entrepreneurship in this area. I suppose also looking to attract footprints from global players to the United Kingdom.

So that’s important because that creates employment and it creates a say in the debate. It’s about creating the infrastructure we need. So supercomputers for Bristol and Edinburgh University, those computers are needed for people to be able to do what they need to do.

Making sure that we have the right data centres to process it, making sure we have energy that’s priced at the right levels. So it’s all part of a bigger plan to make sure we remain in the competitive landscape.

[Zoe] (16:21 – 16:53)

Well I just want to pick up, you mentioned employment there and I wanted to combine that with something you mentioned earlier which I think is a really big topic, particularly I’ve recently been at a few tech conferences and this is a topic that keeps coming up. So we’re talking about the structural challenge of training talent when AI automates the starting jobs. So maybe there’s employment and I was actually about to follow up and say, “Oh and from employment you get learning and upskilling and are we still going to be seeing that and if not what are we going to do about it?”

[Ben] (16:53 – 18:50)

You know something we talk about in our profession that those who don’t want to trade to be an accountant, you could switch off. I’ll try to make this as succinct as possible but broadly the way that you train an accountant, as you said, “This is what the person who’s a year more experienced you did last year.” There’s an element of crunching numbers to understand that you kind of learn. It’s like foundational learning isn’t it? It’s a little bit like I teach children to write by repeating sentences and rewriting and it’s an effort level. That’s the way we’ve trained a lot of professions and when a technology removes that layer, how do you teach?

It’s a bit like the same question as saying how has education been changed by putting handsets in the phone handsets in the hands of children. It used to be that if you wanted to understand the answer to a question you would go ask somebody or you’d go and research it. You know whether you go to a library and get a library card look it up. Now if you want to know the answer to something you just tap into your phone and you get the information you move on.

So I think there will need to be an evolution of how we teach people. There comes an inherent risk if we don’t understand how the information is being given to us then that creates a problem. But I suppose there is a risk isn’t there of sort of saying if we don’t do it the old way, it’s too scary, and I do worry we sometimes sound a little bit like luddites saying that.

It’s a little bit like saying to people take away the calculators people have to understand how maths works without it. What do I think for education? I think it’s really interesting a year or two ago the Russell Group universities banded together and said we’re going to come up with a more sophisticated AI syllabus.

I think we have a foundational technology here which could change the world but people have to use it correctly and appropriately and I think there’ll still be a place for people who deal with you know all the areas around that. I still think there’ll be a need for historians just because the tool might be able to tell us when a battle took place, we still need people to think about it interpret it and actually those people still have transferable creative and analytical skills that can be needed in the business application. So I think you’re absolutely right I think it will change the way the workforce is trained and composed but I think there’ll be answers, there tend to be.

[Zoe] (18:50 – 19:26)

So I completely agree and I’m a big believer in the ingenuity of human beings and the adaptability of human beings, and actually I think one of the things the Luddites didn’t see is how everyone would reskill and how much the world would change and how the place where they thought the challenge was going to be actually wasn’t where the challenge was at all, and that if you just stop all progress it will come and bite you in the end, like even if it’s a short-term benefit for you to keep it as it is long term.

So fingers crossed, eh?

[Ben] (19:27 – 20:22)

I think so. Often the use of this technology and the data is compared to the sort of a new industrial age, like the invention of steam engine. In a lot of ways I look at it fairly unsophisticatedly, feels to me like the invention of the printing press, like the idea that suddenly information can be shared and disseminated cheaply, quickly across vast areas, creates connectivity in new ways, creates misinformation in the same way as well. 

I’m sure there are kind of lessons to be learned by people who are much more informed than I am on that, but you know I kind of think about my degree in printing press and some of the debates and I really go back to that and think about some of the stuff. So that’s one of the reasons I find it exciting, but it’s also one of the reasons that we, we often hear RSM kind of talk to our clients and say, “Got to build an understanding of what you’re dealing with here because the excuse of ‘I don’t really understand it’ or ‘it’s technology, I don’t really do technology’ just doesn’t really work anymore, does it? It’s going to happen, it’s here to stay and we’ve got to get on with it.”

[Zoe] (20:22 – 20:40)

Yeah, and we’re all going to have new skill sets. Like when I entered the workforce I was part of this new wave of computer programmers, suddenly there were loads of computer programmers and no one could hire them quickly enough, and there will be new jobs and new ways of doing business always, like we’re always evolving as a society.

[Ben] (20:40 – 21:49)

I’m hoping it gives us more spare time. One of the things that the creative sector didn’t like was when it, when GPT and others, other chat bots are available, we’re writing movie scripts and areas like that. I think creators were saying, “Well this is like, it’s just regurgitate,” you know people were uncomfortable with that and there was this challenge saying, “I don’t want gens of AI to paint for me and write for me. I’d like to do that in my spare time. What I’d like it to do is my chores and to do my boring job,” and I think that’s a really interesting challenge. 

We wanted to do the things that we don’t enjoy and I don’t know, I, I was sat with one of my nieces the other day and she was, she was just showing me Minecraft and I was kind of reflecting with her dad and I was saying, “Isn’t it interesting that we’d have played with Lego when we were that age, and done exactly the same thing, and she’s performing, you know, a creative act through what she’s building in Minecraft for the new technology, instantly comfortable with digital technology in a way that is quite interesting.” It’s no bad thing. What she’s doing is no less creative than when we’d have tipped all the Lego bricks on the floor and built something. And um it’s just a good example of how the technology’s evolved but maybe what we’re doing is exactly the same?

[Zoe] (21:49 – 21:55)

Yeah, and you can’t tread on them and get them spiking your foot unexpectedly in the carpet.

[Ben] (21:55 – 22:50)

Yes, it’s less dangerous although I think at one point the iPad did get flung across the room and that would have been a more expensive mistake than a Lego brick or two. But I still love Lego. I find it really interesting how a lot of people who are really into, who have very creative and demanding roles are really motivated by Lego because they like being told what to do and like building these complex sets. 

The other one I was reading about the other day was the business that created Warhammer, Games Workshop, enormously strong result and have, you know, announced they want to give back to their people. But actually, you know, behind that are a number of reasons like a very successful video game, but also a lot of men in their late 30s and 40s have returned to painting miniatures because they like sort of being told what to do but do something creative. And I just wonder sometimes if behind that it’s because you know our jobs require maybe a lot of thought and it’s quite nice to do that with your fingers and do something. I was rubbish at it when I was a teenager so I’m certainly not going to be picking it up again as an adult.

[Zoe] (22:50 – 22:53)

Oh, who knows? Maybe now’s the time. Get back into it.

[Ben] (22:53 – 22:54)

Yeah, maybe.

[Zoe] (22:54 – 23:07)

Just to wrap up. Looking ahead to the next three to five years, what macroeconomic or policy shifts should digital leaders be watching most closely and how can they position themselves to respond with agility and confidence?

[Ben] (23:07 – 24:43)

Right, that’s a really big question, especially at the moment where I think it’s fair to say the uncertainty about the economy and the global world is quite high, if that makes sense. We’re in a situation at the moment with fairly flat interest rate expectations globally, uncertainty about tariffs, uncertainty about, you know, frankly some of the the conflicts that are taking place. 

So a lot of strategy at the moment is just making sure that they’re right, basically. A lot of strategy thoughts are around that in the short term, which can distract from the bigger picture. I don’t think it takes away, if you think about the the march of technology, thinking about how, if it is true that, you know, some surveys have said between 50 and 70 percent of your workforce will have their role significantly modified by the use of digital and artificial intelligence technologies, what does that mean to the shape of your business? 

I think that has to be a first concern. I think that has to be a concern too if you have a product that can be threatened by a platform technology or tool, you have to think about what that might mean. They’re not necessarily macro trends, if that makes sense, but I think they’re technology trends that are worth thinking about. And the positivity around tech valuations, the number of deals and investments that will tend to increase when we have more certainty. So the more uncertainty there is, it tends to be investment decisions are kind of delayed, valuations are depressed, decisions are put off. So the one that probably would bring confidence back is just more certainty, and stability is always going to be a good thing.

[Zoe] (24:43 – 24:54)

Fantastic. Well, it’s hoping we can get some more stability before we get more change again from something new coming in. Anyway, thank you so much for coming on and thanks to everyone for listening and see you next time.

[Ben] (24:54 – 24:55)

Thank you.