Our latest Three Big Ideas roundup is now out! This week: 🍄 @Philip_Salter on why entrepreneurship can’t be left to chance 🛩️ @MannVirdee on why teams can be more resilient than solo entrepreneurs 🌱 @iannghh on making self-employment a route into work

🩺 Christina Davis qualified as a doctor, then went full-time on her marketing business Presell Studio in Newcastle. She matched her salary within three months: "AI gives me access to capabilities that would previously have required a team."

🧽 Olivia Regan left school without GCSEs and launched Crystal Clean in Solihull in 2024. It now brings in up to £10,000 a month and supports a team of freelancers: "Starting a business can be a real route into work."

💷 @Cebr_uk modelled what would happen if 5% of NEET young people (around 50,000) started businesses between 2027 and 2029. The answer: almost £4bn in additional output by 2029.

🚀 Meanwhile, around 193,000 16–24-year-olds are now self-employed, 27,500 more than in 2022/23 and the highest level in more than a decade. The youth self-employment rate rose from 4.5% to 5.4%.

🍽️ The fall is concentrated in the jobs that usually give young people their first experience of work. Hospitality and other services account for 55% of the drop in under-25 payroll jobs in Sage's data.

📉 Using @sageuk payroll data and analysis by @Cebr_uk, we found employees aged 16–24 fell by 129,200 between 2022/23 and 2025/26 (–3.7%), while employees of all ages rose by 1.7%.

This afternoon we launched Job Creators 2026, our annual report on the foreign-born founders building Britain's fastest-growing businesses, with @Penningtonslaw We were delighted to be joined by @JoshReynoldsSL6, Matthew Martin and @pat_saini.

🇿🇦 Alexandra Birch-Mayne co-authored a 2016 paper on a technique now used in most large language models, then co-founded Edinburgh AI firm Aveni. She described the immigration system as “very expensive and unfriendly to people who are high value.”

🇦🇺 Tim Chong moved from Australia and co-founded fintech Yonder. When delays hit his settlement application mid-growth, the Global Talent Taskforce stepped in: “Without their help, the uncertainty would have significantly impacted the business.”