Digital and Financial Innovation Workshop
Cambridge University, 14th May 2025
The Innovation Hub co-organised the Digital and Financial Innovation Lab with the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) at Cambridge Judge Business School. The event brought together approximately 40 carefully selected participants from technology, business, investment, academia, regulatory authorities, economics, psychology, and behavioural science, to explore how digital innovation can contribute to shared prosperity.
A highlight of the event was the participation of Montek Singh Ahluwalia — one of the world’s most respected economists and public servants, and a key architect of India’s 1991 economic reforms — whose citizen-first perspective grounded discussions in both vision and realism. Key themes included learning from past digital innovations; scaling citizen-first technology, including India’s experiment with Aadhaar, UPI, and open networks and what the UK and global systems can learn from it; the convergence of AI and citizen-first digital innovation; and finding the right balance between standardisation and innovation, the evolution of ‘Nationstacks’, interoperability, and the role of coordination between the public and private sectors.
