What is the best thing government can do to help improve business productivity? Provide more business support? Create better conditions for doing business? Or simply, get out of the way. In other words, can government policy and business growth

Business Dynamism: is turbulence good for productivity?

Mar 14th, 2024 53m 23s

What is business dynamism? Do we need a bit more turbulence in business creation, growth and change to get productivity up again? This episode, the first of three on the productivity of firms, looks at the mechanism between productivity and bus

Wrapping up Productivity Puzzles 2023: brief interviews with productivity experts

Dec 20th, 2023 43m 5s

The final episode of Productivity Puzzles Season 2 examines whether 2023 has brought us closer to putting the productivity puzzle together. What are some of the most important insights from this season of the podcast? And what can we learn from

Revisiting the UK productivity puzzle: national and regional perspectives

Nov 30th, 2023 1h 14m

Is the UK Productivity Puzzle anywhere closer to being solved? Where do we see progress? And what are the pieces of the jigsaw that still need to be found? This episode of Productivity Puzzles, released during National Productivity Week, examin

Why does the UK do so well on the Global Innovation Index?

Nov 9th, 2023 54m 34s

How do we measure innovation and compare it across countries? And how can it be that the UK is doing so well as an innovation nation, while we seem to be underperforming on productivity?This episode of Productivity Puzzles takes a deep dive i

What makes firms productive? Lessons learned from across G7 economies

Oct 12th, 2023 51m 5s

What makes a business productive? Do businesses have a sense of what they’re good at and where to improve? This episode of Productivity Puzzles looks at the Productive Business Index produced by Be The Business, one of The Productivity Institut

Science, Technology, Innovation and Pro-Productivity Policies

Aug 31st, 2023 47m 50s

What have policies to boost science, technology and innovation done for productivity? Which policies are most effective? Which countries have been most successful in using them? This episode of Productivity Puzzles steps away from the usual pan

Turnaround Cities: Lessons learned for the UK

Jul 27th, 2023 50m 37s

How have some troubled cities overseas turned themselves around? What did they invest in? How did they organise themselves? Cities are concentrations of economic activity where businesses tend to locate, not just because many of their customers

Artificial Intelligence and Productivity

Jun 29th, 2023 53m 24s

Will artificial intelligence rescue us from the productivity demise? If humans cannot get productivity up, can intelligent machines bring about the productivity revival? While certainly not the only digital technology that has come along in the

Greening Productivity

May 25th, 2023 52m 53s

Can we make the economy greener and still be productive? Or even better, can productivity help us to make the economy greener? This episode of Productivity Puzzles examines what climate change and the transition to a Net Zero means for producti

Can We Make the Four-Day Week Work?

Apr 27th, 2023 52m 36s

Is the five-day work week becoming something of the past? Does working less make us and the organisations that we work for better off? Could it even make us more productive?This episode explores the four-day work week, which has become a popu

Skills, Innovation, and Productivity: Further Education Colleges and Place

Mar 16th, 2023 53m 54s

How do Further Education Colleges contribute to the provision of skills needed for innovation and productivity in regions, cities and towns? How do they identify what businesses need, and how do they work with firms, local government and other

Science and Innovation Policy for Hard Times

Feb 16th, 2023 54m 32s

There is a new UK government department for science, innovation, and technology. Will the new standalone entity turn Britain into the science superpower that it hopes to become? Will the new department lift productivity growth during the hard t

Global and European Productivity Outlook 2023-2030

Jan 19th, 2023 53m 31s

What do we know about where productivity is heading? What will happen to productivity in the UK, around Europe, and even around the world? This episode takes a forward-looking perspective on future productivity and what needs to be done to real

The Productivity Policy Agenda: Short-Term Priorities and Long-Term Commitments

Sep 1st, 2022 1h

Should the next Prime Minister embrace productivity as a cornerstone of the policy agenda for the new UK government in September? Can it help to get us through the economic winter ahead of us, and onto a path of sustained recovery? What policie

Making Public Sector Productivity Practical

Jul 20th, 2022 49m 37s

Despite showing slow productivity growth over the past decade, the public sector has performed better than the private sector and there is quite a bit of scope for further improvement. This instalment of Productivity Puzzles delves into how and

Productivity and well-being

Jul 6th, 2022 50m 8s

How can productivity benefit not just business and the economy, but also ourselves? What does it take for a society to grow productivity and raise well-being? Can digital technology make us happier, as well as more productive?In this episode,

The Wales Productivity Challenge

Jun 15th, 2022 52m 22s

Did you know that the manufacturing sector in Wales accounts for a larger share of the economy than elsewhere in the UK? That the Welsh economy is also developing exciting new activities in arts and culture and tackling the difficult balancing

Can productivity rescue the global economic recovery?

May 11th, 2022 29m 50s

Are economies making the most of their human and material resources? Through most of modern history, we've assumed that progress in technology and efficiency will make every person employed and our work more productive over time. Is this a hope

Restarting the Future: How Intangibles Can Fuel Productivity

Apr 27th, 2022 54m 1s

Why has economic growth slowed down? Have we already exhausted the benefits from the digital revolution? Are the trusted institutions of the 20th century now failing in the investments most needed for future growth in productivity?This epis

Staying productive in uncertain times

Apr 13th, 2022 55m 19s

How do we respond to uncertainties that crises create? Are they holding us back in investing, hiring and innovating? Or can crises make us more agile and resilient, perhaps even more creative and inventive? How do we balance risks and opportuni

New business formation and productivity

Mar 23rd, 2022 50m 2s

Why do we need new firms? How important is business creation for employment and productivity? How has the coronavirus pandemic affected the churning of businesses? In this episode of Productivity Puzzles, we discuss business dynamism, which is

The Links Between Productivity and Pay

Mar 9th, 2022 52m 6s

Productivity is key to sustained economic growth, but how does it make each of us financially better off? Do productivity gains always end up in our pockets in terms of better pay?In this episode, we’ve invited scholars from the US, Canada an

Levelling Up and Productivity: The Role of Industrial Policy, Institutions and Fiscal Mechanisms

Jan 12th, 2022 54m 24s

How do we level up regions in a sustained manner - raising productivity and living standards, and reducing inequalities? Why do institutions matter and what should change to make it work? The government introduced its Levelling Up agenda to t

Health and Productivity in the Workplace

Dec 1st, 2021 50m 43s

Are healthy workers productive workers? And if so, why do companies still struggle to put health and well-being at the centre of good business performance? And how can this be changed? In this episode, host Bart van Ark is joined by Sir Cary