Uber’s licence loss shows impact of toxic tech culture on innovation

Uber has been stripped of their licence to operate in London due to what Transport for London termed ‘lack of corporate responsibility’. The increasing importance of technology to big cities in the UK means that improving corporate culture amongst innovators is a matter of public interest, according to World Wide Technology.

The company, which has first-hand experience of projects to create so-called ‘smart cities’ driven by next-generation technologies, warns that applying innovation within these infrastructures requires a high level of corporate responsibility.

Ben Boswell, EMEA Director at World Wide Technology, comments: “The complexity involved in many smart city projects, some of them using vast amounts of data and impacting thousands of lives, means that technology providers must be held to high standards.

“What we’ve seen with Uber is the unravelling of a company that is based on a toxic culture. Diversity, inclusion and corporate responsibility need to underpin technology innovations. The potential that technology holds for the good of our cities is tremendous: as an industry we need to do more to tackle cultural issues in corporate culture so that consumers’ access to innovation is not restricted like this again.”