Rohan Silva: It’s time for the Tories to embrace Generation Rent

In the 1970s, US corporation Kodak was on top of the world. At the time, it was selling 90 per cent of the photographic film in the US, and 85 per cent of the cameras — making it a hugely successful business.

The company ploughed some of its profits back into innovation — and deep in the bowels of Kodak’s research labs, an engineer named Steve Sasson came up with an invention that he knew would be a huge hit with the public: the world’s first ever digital camera.

What happened next? Absolutely nothing. Kodak’s managers were terrified of losing sales for their existing films — so they refused to launch the new technology. As an ex-employee recalls: “We couldn’t get approval to sell it because of fear of the effects on the film market.”

Other companies weren’t so worried, launching their own digital cameras — and within a few years, Kodak was bankrupt.

The lesson is that it’s dangerous for any organisation to try to cling on to declining market share for too long. Even if it means losing existing customers — you’ve got to be willing to go after new opportunities.

This is precisely the dilemma facing the Government today. People who own their own homes are much more likely to vote Conservative — 55 per cent of owners voted for Theresa May, versus just 31 per cent of renters.

But as the opinion polls show, the Tories are losing “market share” to Labour — reflecting the fact that fewer young people than ever before are able to get on the housing ladder.

The scale of the problem is immense. People born in the mid-1980s are more than twice as likely to be living in rented accommodation as older people. As a result, those born in the 1980s have only half the wealth by age 31 as people born in the 1970s.

Fixing the issue requires radical reform of the bureaucratic planning system to enable millions more homes to be built — as well as bold property tax changes to help fund the construction of council housing across the country.

But this would risk hitting existing homeowners (and Tory voters) — either with falling house prices if more homes are built, or with higher taxes.

Just like Kodak and the digital camera, the Tories have to choose between clinging onto their existing customers (voters) — or risk alienating them by doing the right thing for the next generation.

There’s only one right answer — and that’s to seize the future.

Novels find new ways to grip readers

It’s been a great year for books — with new novels by Arundhati Roy and Paul Auster, among many others.

But the one I’m most excited about is the new work by American author Jennifer Egan, whose last title — A Visit From the Goon Squad — was one of my favourite novels of the past decade.

What’s so brilliant about Egan is how she’s willing to incorporate language from the modern world into her fiction — like text messages and emails — to help ground the characters in a realistic setting.

Egan isn’t the only one innovating. Jeffrey Eugenides’s brilliant new book Fresh Complaint features a perfectly rendered series of text message exchanges, while the outstanding Irish author Kevin Barry borrows new narrative techniques from TV shows like The Wire.

People have predicted the death of the novel for ages — but as long as writers are open to innovation, and refuse to let the medium stagnate, the future is brighter than ever.

As the owner of a little bookshop in east London, that’s quite a relief to me.

To entrepreneurs making a difference

Shout out to tech start-up Andela, which has just raised a whopping £30 million from investors. The company trains software developers in Africa and gets them working on projects for global businesses — a real win-win for everyone involved.

With campuses in Lagos and Nairobi, they’re creating hundreds of well-paid jobs — and showing the world just how much talent there is across the continent.

It’s a great example of how entrepreneurship can make a positive difference. Truly inspiring.

Never give up on your pipe dream

When I was growing up, I played football literally every day. Today I only get to play one night a week — and it pains me to admit I’m not quite as good as Harry Kane.

Still, that doesn’t mean I haven’t spent decades dreaming of being a professional player — even if it was obvious from the start I was nowhere near talented enough.

Luckily, I have a new pipe dream: becoming a football manager. This isn’t quite so unrealistic — after all, Italian club Napoli’s boss Maurizio Sarri spent his career as a banker before donning a tracksuit and becoming a coach.

Tonight my hero Sarri is taking on Manchester City in the Champions League. I know who I’m going to be rooting for.