DES - Digital Enterprise Show 2022, which will take place June 14th to 16th in Málaga (Spain), has announced that the United Kingdom will be guest country partner for the upcoming edition. A large number of tech and business organisations from the United Kingdom will join DES2022 to share efforts, strategies, insights and solutions to drive digitalisation throughout the European business ecosystem, promoting new production models to improve business competitiveness of SMEs, large corporations but also of public administrations.

In terms of digitisation, the United Kingdom is one of the world-leading countries, only behind the United States and China. In 2020, UK gathered 33% of European technology investments. In addition, according to the DESI (Digital Economy and Society Index 2020), the UK was for third time in a row the seventh country in business digitalisation.

"DES2022 is the place to be to connect technology with business, is the place where tech companies and executive leaders from all over the world will share their expertise, innovation and knowledge to shape busin            esses through digitalisation. Therefore, this year we will have a large representation coming from the UK, a country that is leading the transformation of industries. DES will be the place to design the post-Brexit market and develop new synergies together with to create a fully digitised European ecosystem", said Sandra Infante, director of DES - Digital Enterprise Show.

UK has a long tradition of technology development and innovation, as well as a strong representation of technology companies such as Vodafone, BT Group and SAGE, a position that has led the country to the forefront of FinTech disruption with companies like Revolut, SumUp or Checkout.com. In the British economy, it also becomes relevant the transformation that the UK is driving through technology in industries like food tech, with the application of robots in farms promoted by Small Robots.

Also, the entrepreneurial culture with powerful innovation projects such as Benevolent AI, a company that integrates Artificial Intelligence in the healthcare industry; or Arrival, which is producing net zero-emission electric buses, those are some of UK’s strengths.

In addition, the adoption of technologies is higher in the UK compared to the European average, with 30% of British companies using cloud services (12% more compared to the rest of the European countries, according to ICEX). An energetic and successful innovation exercise that has lived its peak during the pandemic, with the creation of more than 85,000 online companies in the first 6 months of 2020, according to Growth Intelligence data.

Digitalisation and the focus on online commerce are not the only strategic axes of the United Kingdom, a country that has also been able to promote different regions as Smart Cities, such as Newcastle. This city was named in 2021 as the smartest city in the United Kingdom according to the World Smart Cities Index, ahead of large cities like London or Manchester. According to this index, which measures how technology improves the lives of citizens, Newcastle is a pioneer city in technological research and has an exponentially growing technology cluster where the UK's National Data Innovation Centre is located.

UK businesses and ministerial representation at DES2022

A large business delegation from the United Kingdom gathering large corporations, SMEs and startups, as well as representatives that will attend the ministerial agenda of DES2022.

The alliance of Spain and the United Kingdom during DES2022 will be an example of how to promote public-private collaboration at an international level, highlighting the relevance of digital transformation as a lever to accelerate business in the new post-Brexit period.