FLAT WHITE ECONOMY: How the Digital Economy Is Transforming London and Other Cities of the Future - Softcover

Since the financial collapse, the ‘Flat White Economy’ has spawned four times as many jobs than London lost in the crisis. London is now growing one and a half times faster than Hong Kong as a result. Leading economist Douglas McWilliams describes how this meteoric success, named after its favorite coffee and centered on East London, has swapped the city’s champagne and supercars lifestyle for bicycles and boho flats and has become the prototype for digital cities that will change both the rest of the UK and other parts of the world as well. The book shows how these developments have had a massive economic impact, and affect politics and lifestyles. It addresses the impact of the FWE on North South divide in the UK and its equivalents in other parts of the world. And controversially it also shows how a driving force behind this new economy is immigration and the creativity that is generated when talented people of different backgrounds and mindsets end up working together.

Douglas McWilliams is Executive Chairman of the Centre for Economics and Business Research, one of the UK’s leading specialist economics consultancies, and one of the most highly respected sources of business advice and research. His career has focused on making economics relevant to commerce, first as Chief Economic Adviser to the Confederation of British Industry, then as Chief Economist for IBM UK. In 2012 he was chosen from over 300 applicants to become the Gresham Professor of Commerce at Gresham College.