Oxford+

What would it take for Britain to turn promising start-ups into global companies that stay and grow here? In this episode of Oxford+ in partnership with Mishcon de Reya, host Susannah de Jager speaks with Eva Barboni, Executive Director of Enterprise Britain, about the ambition, capital and talent needed to close the UK scale-up gap. Eva explains why public attitudes towards success matter, how decades of policy have steered households and pension funds towards safer assets, and why British capital behind British businesses can keep jobs, investment and decision-making in the country. The conversation covers retail investing, pension fiduciary duty, Series B funding, non-compete clauses, AI and entry-level work. It also asks how universities and regional clusters can spread the gains from new businesses more widely. The timing is apt. A September analysis from the UK Business Angels Association notes that UK-managed venture capital funds returned 13.3% a year over ten years, as pension providers explore a fund of more than £1 billion for British scale-ups. Eva’s case is clear: policy reform needs a public story that links business growth to shared prosperity. Eva Barboni: Eva Barboni is Executive Director of Enterprise Britain, where she campaigns for policies that help British companies grow and share the gains more widely. She has spent 20 years working across policy, communications and stakeholder engagement. Eva began her career on political campaigns in the United States, starting with Howard Dean’s 2003 to 2004 presidential campaign, before working on campaigns in the UK and other countries. She later founded and led Atalanta, a strategic communications consultancy ranked among PR Week’s top five ESG consultancies. Her experience combines political campaigning, public narrative and first-hand knowledge of building a business in the UK. Susannah de Jager: Susannah is a seasoned professional with over 15 years of experience in UK asset management. She has worked closely with industry experts, entrepreneurs, and government officials to shape the conversation around domestic scale-up capital. Connect with Susannah on LinkedIn and Subscribe to the Oxford+ Newsletter for Exclusive Content Oxford+ is hosted by Susannah de Jager and supported by Mishcon de Reya and HSBC Innovation Banking. Produced and Edited by Story Ninety-Four in Oxford.

What will it take for Britain to turn its research strengths into companies that stay, scale and list at home? Gordon Sanghera takes listeners through Oxford Nanopore's rise and its decision to list in London. Eva Barboni of Enterprise Britain argues for shorter non-competes to free up talent, and Acorn co-founder Hermann Hauser asks how Europe can fund its next generation of global companies. Conversations with the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, Immunocore and Genomics follow. The timing matters. UK university spinouts raised £1.3bn of venture capital in 2025, down from £2.2bn in 2024, according to Dealroom's Spotlight on Spinouts report. The ideas are here. Season Five asks what it will take to build on them, starting 29 September. Susannah de Jager: Susannah is a seasoned professional with over 15 years of experience in UK asset management. She has worked closely with industry experts, entrepreneurs, and government officials to shape the conversation around domestic scale-up capital. Connect with Susannah on LinkedIn and Subscribe to the Oxford+ Newsletter for Exclusive Content Oxford+ is hosted by Susannah de Jager and supported by Mishcon de Reya and HSBC Innovation Banking. Produced and Edited by Story Ninety-Four in Oxford.

What are we unwilling to automate away? In this wrap episode of Oxford+, host Susannah de Jager returns to the ten conversations that made up the Ethics and Innovation miniseries and draws out the thread running through all of them. Philosophers, technologists, lawyers, policymakers and social innovators discuss democracy, language and intelligence, care, healthcare, access to justice, and who benefits when innovation succeeds. The timing matters. Bill Gates has argued that AI will be either the greatest equaliser ever invented or the worst source of injustice, and that the choices made now will decide which, in a 6,000-word essay published in 2026. Public confidence remains thin: around 1 in 3 adults in Great Britain say they would not trust AI to carry out any task, according to the Office for National Statistics. This is a short guide to the debate for people who will not build AI systems but will live with the results, at work, in hospitals, in classrooms and in court. Susannah de Jager: Susannah is a seasoned professional with over 15 years of experience in UK asset management. She has worked closely with industry experts, entrepreneurs, and government officials to shape the conversation around domestic scale-up capital. Connect with Susannah on LinkedIn and Subscribe to the Oxford+ Newsletter for Exclusive Content In this episode of Ethics and Innovation by Oxford+ brought to you by Equinox. Produced and Edited by Story Ninety-Four in Oxford.

What happens when you point some of the world's strongest analytical tools at problems money alone has never fixed? In this episode of Ethics and Innovation by Oxford+ brought to you by Equinox, host Susannah de Jager speaks with Juan M Lavista Ferres, Corporate Vice President and Chief Data Scientist at Microsoft and director of its AI for Good Lab. Juan explains how a study of 20 million births changed what researchers knew about smoking and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, why a satellite image and a CT scan are the same problem to a machine learning team, and how roughly 100 incoming requests get filtered down to two or three funded projects. The timing is pointed. The World Economic Forum reported in August 2026 that the world faces a shortage of health workers by 2030, according to the World Economic Forum, which is the exact supply gap behind Juan's work on preventable blindness in premature babies. He is equally clear about the limits: no data, no access, no expert partner, no project. Every tool his team builds, he says, could also be used as a weapon. (00:00) - Welcome to Oxford+ (01:42) - From Development Banking to AI for Good (03:49) - What 20 Million Births Revealed about SIDS (05:23) - Why Every Project Needs a Domain Expert (06:21) - Satellite Images and CT Scans: The Same Problem (08:39) - The Funnel and the Tyranny of Choice (10:17) - Data Access, Privacy and Labelled Data (13:50) - Open Source, No Fees and Donated Expertise (16:40) - SPARROW and the Data Collection Problem (20:06) - Legal Help for Women and Girls in Malawi (23:18) - Preventable Blindness and the 36-Hour Window (26:30) - Responsible AI, Bias and Tools Used as Weapons Juan M Lavista Ferres: Juan M Lavista Ferres is Corporate Vice President and Chief Data Scientist at Microsoft and director of the AI for Good Lab, which he co-founded in 2018. He leads a team of data scientists and researchers in AI, machine learning and statistical modelling, working with domain experts on health, sustainability, humanitarian response and accessibility. Before Microsoft he spent five years at the Inter-American Development Bank, and after joining Microsoft in 2009 he worked on the Experimentation Platform and the Bing data mining team before moving into applied research. His SIDS work with academic collaborators was published in Pediatrics, and he is a co-author of the lab's AI for Good book. He is a co-author of the 2025 JAMA Network Open study on AI-enabled screening for retinopathy of prematurity in low-resource settings. Connect with Juan on LinkedIn Susannah de Jager: Susannah is a seasoned professional with over 15 years of experience in UK asset management. She has worked closely with industry experts, entrepreneurs, and government officials to shape the conversation around domestic scale-up capital. Connect with Susannah on LinkedIn and Subscribe to the Oxford+ Newsletter for Exclusive Content In this episode of Ethics and Innovation by Oxford+ brought to you by Equinox. Produced and Edited by Story Ninety-Four in Oxford.

How can one of the UK's most prosperous counties also hold some of its widest gaps in life expectancy and school results? In this episode of Ethics and Innovation by Oxford+ brought to you by Equinox, host Susannah de Jager speaks with Jeremy Long, co-chair of the Oxfordshire Inclusive Economy Partnership, about what an inclusive economy looks like in practice and why averages hide as much as they reveal. Jeremy sets out the OIEP's three working groups, early years, youth engagement and inclusive employers, and the charter that lets organisations pick the pledges they can act on now. He describes taking employers into HMP Bullingdon to see how ex-offenders can return to work, the early years summit that put school readiness back on the county agenda, and plans to revive work experience through the Opportunity For All event. The timing matters. Figures published on 27 August 2026 show 981,000 young people across the UK were not in education, employment or training between April and June, according to the Office for National Statistics. Jeremy explains how Oxfordshire can match unfilled roles with local talent, and how Equinox extends that work. (00:00) - Welcome to Oxford+ (01:53) - What the Oxfordshire Inclusive Economy Partnership Is (03:45) - The Averages That Mask Oxfordshire's Inequality (06:27) - Early Years, Youth and Inclusive Employers (08:34) - Inside the OIEP Charter and Its Pledges (10:24) - Ex-Offenders, Timpson and HMP Bullingdon (11:40) - Closing the Gap for 18 to 24-Year-Olds (12:38) - The Early Years Summit and What Came Next (15:56) - Cradle to Career and the School as Anchor (18:12) - Reviving Work Experience Across the County (21:32) - Equinox, the Local Policy Lab and Green Skills (27:07) - Aspirations for the Next Five Years Jeremy Long: Jeremy Long is co-chair of the Oxfordshire Inclusive Economy Partnership, a collaboration of more than 100 organisations across business, local government, the universities, education and the voluntary and community sectors. A chartered accountant by training, he spent fifteen years as chief executive of MTR Corporation's European business and chaired the Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership from 2016 to 2023. He has chaired the board of trustees at River Learning Trust since October 2023, sits as a non-executive director of National Grid Electricity Transmission, and chairs the Oxford energy efficiency installer EnergyMyWay. Connect with Jeremy on LinkedIn. Susannah de Jager: Susannah is a seasoned professional with over 15 years of experience in UK asset management. She has worked closely with industry experts, entrepreneurs, and government officials to shape the conversation around domestic scale-up capital. Connect with Susannah on LinkedIn and Subscribe to the Oxford+ Newsletter for Exclusive Content Oxford+ is hosted by Susannah de Jager and supported by Equinox. Produced and Edited by Story Ninety-Four in Oxford.