A great start – even without lunch

In previous years, regional judging sessions for The Spectator’s Economic Innovator of the Year Awards, sponsored by Julius Baer, have all taken place over convivial lunches – and readers of my weekly Any Other Business column know how much I enjoy throwing in a restaurant tip as part of an economic parable. This year, however, that hasn’t been possible, for obvious reasons, so like millions of other daily meeting participants around the world we have resorted to Zoom (plus snacks) to enable working-from-home judges and finalists to encounter each other through the small screen.

Of course, just as our own processes have had to be changed because of the Covid pandemic, we are keen to learn what effect it has had on the extraordinary range of business that entered for this year’s Awards – a record total of almost 150, so far whittled down to 24 finalists in our four regions.