Frank Holmes argues that prosperity for all must be the measure for economic success.
AI image depicting inclusive economic growth.
There is a question missing from much of our economic debate. We talk endlessly about growth, productivity, investment and public expenditure.
We measure progress through GDP, employment and financial performance. Yet too rarely do we ask the question that should come first: why?
Why do we seek economic growth? Surely not simply to produce larger statistics, but to create a society in which more people can live healthier, more secure and fulfilling lives. Simon Sinek’s Start with Why offers a useful discipline: establish the purpose before debating the means. Prosperity for all should be that purpose. Growth is indispensable, but it is the instrument, not the destination.
Why, then, does innovation matter? Because ideas become economically valuable when translated into products, services, enterprises and skilled employment.
Artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced manufacturing and digital technologies can expand productive capacity.
But discovery alone is not enough. Research must be commercialised, businesses scaled and new markets reached. Britain’s recurring difficulty is not a shortage of ideas, but too often the failure to retain the investment, production and rewards that follow them.
For Wales, the implication is immediate. Our academic and industrial strengths are foundations, not finished economic outcomes.
They require entrepreneurial ambition, commercial leadership, patient capital and a willingness to collaborate beyond our borders. Why invest in research if the economic value it creates is routinely realised elsewhere? The answer is to connect invention with enterprise, finance and international demand.
Why place education at the centre of this ambition? Because technology does not generate prosperity independently of people. High standards in literacy, numeracy, science and critical thinking must sit alongside vocational excellence, digital competence and lifelong learning.
Education should prepare people not merely for the jobs available today, but for the industries we have yet to build. Stronger links between employers, universities, colleges and schools can turn talent into productive capability.
And why insist on inclusion? Because an economy that overlooks ability on account of background, income or circumstance squanders its own potential.
Excellence and access are complementary ambitions. Different cultures, experiences and perspectives can strengthen enterprise and social life when integration means genuine participation, mutual respect and shared civic responsibility. The purpose is not simply to accommodate difference, but to enable everyone to contribute to a common prosperity.
Why should healthcare feature in an economic strategy? Because health is a precondition for participation. Recent global research estimates that nearly two-thirds of the avoidable disease burden identified could be addressed through prevention and early intervention, while many countries devote less than 2% of health budgets to prevention.
These are modelled global opportunities, not forecasts for Wales, but the direction of the argument is unmistakable.
Competent treatment will always matter. Yet a system organised principally around responding to illness misses the wider purpose of preserving capability. Earlier diagnosis, effective prevention, better primary care and sensible use of digital technologies can help people remain healthy, independent and economically active.
Why wait for avoidable illness to become an expensive crisis when intervention may improve lives and reduce future pressures?
For Wales, these ambitions converge on a practical reality: prosperity cannot be achieved in isolation. Our economic geography does not stop at a political or administrative boundary.
Supply chains, universities, labour markets, transport networks, energy systems and investors connect Wales to neighbouring English regions, the wider United Kingdom and the world. Why limit our opportunities to what can be achieved within our own institutions when partnership can enlarge the market, deepen expertise and strengthen competitiveness?
Connectivity, however, is not enough. Wales must also be investable. Why should mobile capital choose a project here rather than elsewhere?
Because the proposition is credible: clear priorities, bankable projects, capable delivery institutions, appropriate infrastructure, commercial discipline and a predictable route from decision to execution. Public capital can help address market failures and attract private finance, but funding announcements are not substitutes for investable propositions.
Nor can indecision be mistaken for prudence. Proper scrutiny, democratic accountability and disciplined appraisal are essential. But prolonged uncertainty, fragmented responsibility and repeated reconsideration carry real opportunity costs. Technologies move, competitors act and investment windows close.
Why develop ambitious strategies if the machinery of delivery cannot make timely, defensible decisions? Diligence must lead to action, not paralysis.
It is dangerous to postpone plans until the landscape stops moving and assume the next 5 years will resemble the last and expect to survive. With artificial intelligence compressing the cycles of invention and obsolescence from decades into months competitive advantages will evaporate before prevaricating committees can convene.
Pace, appetite for calculated risk, rejecting what is bad, innovating around obstacles and embracing the spirit of enterprise is the only way that the most adaptable will survive.
The test of leadership is therefore not the volume of policy documents produced, nor the scale of expenditure announced. It is whether productivity improves, businesses grow, earnings rise, educational attainment strengthens, avoidable ill health falls and communities become more confident and cohesive
. Those outcomes are interconnected. Innovation creates value; education equips people to create it; healthcare sustains their capacity; integration widens participation; investment and connectivity turn ambition into delivery.
So we return to why. We pursue growth not for its own sake, but to create a more capable, connected and prosperous society. For Wales, the means are equally clear: build on our strengths, work confidently with our UK neighbours and international partners, make ourselves investable and replace avoidable delay with purposeful execution. Isolation is not an option. Indecision is a threat. Prosperity for all must be the measure of success.
- Frank Holmes is a partner with Gambit Corporate Finance and chair of the Cardiff Capital Region’s Economic Growth Partnership.
