The British are known as tea drinkers, but perhaps…

The British are known as tea drinkers, but perhaps it's time we reshaped our national narrative to be T thinkers.

Yesterday, I spent the day at techUK's Tech & Innovation Summit at the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), and a powerful theme emerged. As a medium-sized nation, no longer part of a major trading bloc but armed with world-class tech expertise, our national strategy needs to be T-shaped. We need the deep, vertical specialisms where we can lead the world, combined with the broad, horizontal skills and systems to connect, translate, and apply that expertise across our entire economy.

The key message from Professor Sir Ian Chapman was to be ‘choiceful’, i.e. do fewer things, but at critical mass.

His metrics on how we rank as a nation for innovation were stark: on 'advancing knowledge,' we're an 8/10. On 'applying it to people's lives,' a 5-6/10, but on 'translating it to boost the economy,' we are a 2/10. This is the gap a T-shaped strategy must fix.

The vertical bar: being 'choiceful'

So where do we plant our flag? The summit buzzed with contenders for our deep specialisms.

On the 'Quantum Means Business' panel, we heard how the UK has a genuine first-mover advantage. But it's a fragile lead. As Kirill Pyshkin Quantum Exponential put it ‘it's the UK's race to lose’ (credit: Tony Blair’s institute and others), especially as US investors swoop in on UK-born research. We have to get serious about commercialisation and skills, and as Andrew Lamb of Delta.g noted, that means training technicians, not just PhDs. The 'Automation Age' panel highlighted UK strengths in hardware, actuators, and sensors. As Jenny Read Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA) pointed out, this is where dexterity and flexibility will open up whole new sectors. Julia Sutcliffe Department for Business and Trade also made a key point on ‘dual-use’ applications, where tech for defence can also revolutionise civilian inspection and logistics.

The message is clear: in areas like quantum sensing, AI-driven robotics, and novel chip design (where Ed Bithell of Fractile noted our deep heritage, e.g. Arm, we have the potential to be world-beaters. This is the deep, vertical bar of our 'T'.

The horizontal bar: connecting the dots

Deep specialisms are useless if they remain in silos. The horizontal bar of the 'T' is about convergence, application, and accessibility.

This was the theme of Jonathan M. Innovate UK 's opening keynote, urging us to free ourselves from vertical silos and look for the convergence and combination of technologies.

It's about building the tools for everyone. Robert Simpson of Zoho spoke on digital resilience, highlighting how AI and low-code platforms can reduce the barriers for non-tech people. This is the generalist skill-base in action, creating a workforce that can use the specialists' tools.

It's also about building the infrastructure for innovation. Lord David Willetts (RIO) gave a brilliant fireside chat on enabling regulation. His vision of using AI to create a machine-readable LLM from the entire corpus of UK regulation is a perfect example of the horizontal bar: using one specialism (AI) to make the entire system faster, smarter, and easier to navigate for everyone. It's how we, as Prof Sir Ian Chapman said, make the UK a low-risk place to do a high-risk thing.

The blocker: we need better storytelling

There's one major barrier to all of this that is very noticeable to me on the comms side: language.

The tech world is muddled. We talk about Quantum and AI in monolithic terms. In one session, there was a misheard reference to predicting the maturation date of ‘AGI’ (Artificial General Intelligence), confusing it 'agentic AI’ – a simple slip, but one that perfectly illustrates how confusing the terminology must be for non-experts.

This isn't just academic. Jakob Mökander TONY BLAIR INSTITUTE warned that a ‘lack of public trust’ is one of the biggest barriers to AI investment and robotics adoption. As an industry, we are failing to communicate the why.

This is where we, as specialist science and tech communicators, come in. Lucy Mason Capgemini Invent and Gemma Church Riverlane both called for this, noting the importance of storytelling and education.

We need to demystify these fields. We need to tell the stories that connect deep tech to daily life, so that a young person thinking of a career in construction gets a taste of how quantum gravity sensing could revolutionise their industry, and feels part of and proud of that national drive.

We have the world-class researchers - great insights on this from Antony Rowstron , Professor Abdul Hamid Sadka , Rahul Tyagi . We have the industrial giants – Daniel Smalley spoke for Siemens) and the policy influencers at techUK Sue Daley OBE Rory Daniels Kir N. Laura Foster & Antony Walker.

Now, we must get the narrative right. That’s how we build trust, attract talent, and truly translate that 2/10 into a 10/10. That's how we become a nation of T thinkers.

A huge thank you to all the speakers and organisers at the IET and techUK for a fascinating and challenging day.