Can Small Nations Compete and Win in the Age of AI? The Case of Wales
October 14, 2026
The AI revolution is reshaping the terms of economic competition — and for small nations without Big Tech headquarters or deep capital markets, the question is whether size can be an advantage rather than a constraint. Wales is a sharp test case. It industrialized early, de-industrialized hard, and has important productivity challenges to overcome. Now Adam Price MS, Wales’s Cabinet Minister for Enterprise, Connectivity and Energy, is betting on AI adoption, clean energy, and a rebuilt skills system to close the gap — all from a sub-national government with limited fiscal levers. Price joins the Growth Lab to discuss what Wales’s strategy reveals about the prospects for small nations in a world being reshaped by AI.
Speaker: Adam Price MS — Welsh Cabinet Minister for Enterprise, Connectivity and Energy
Moderator: Ricardo Hausmann, Director of Harvard’s Growth Lab and the Rafik Hariri Professor of the Practice of International Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School.